Inspiration: a functional approach to creative practice.

15. Thesis conclusions

This research demonstrates that creativity is a natural process that is bound into many aspects of life. Rather than being a separate event that occurs prior the actual implementation of ideas in practice, inspiration is shown in this research as a part of the creative process. In my view, by acknowledging this process, artists that were studied for this research demonstrated becoming aware of an inner voice that guides their attention towards the beauty or the creative in life. With an appreciation of life, the artists experience heightened emotions, which they use in order to create artefacts that serve as expressive tools, not for the artist’s expression of their emotions (since emotions are already expressed, or felt) but for the audience to use for their own expressions.

By observing and critically analysing each part of the process of creating art both in my experience and that of other artists, I have revealed patterns that show that there are shared collective phenomena of translating the environment through emotion, word and image. This research shows that the emergence of a creative impulse does not come prior to making art or afterwards but occurs in the actual process of doing art as the sheer conscious acknowledgment of the process allows for the inspiration that the artist seeks.

This research shows through practice the process in which awareness can widen to allow people a better grasp of instigating inspiration in art.

The process of this research demonstrated that art practice can be applied as a research method in itself to gather data, as well as a method or tool through which participants can learn to access their own creative impulses (as demonstrated in final art workshop). Art practice, in this way, is elevated from mere practice which required theory to explain it, to a practice through which theory is explained – a tool to gain practical knowledge through the act of creating.