Reflecting on the art making process

Abstract

This article reports on a mixed method study of painting and drawing activities of professional artists utilizing semi-structured interviews documenting affective states. The experiential data was supplemented with empirical data utilizing experiments. In experiential data gathering, due to many complex layers of processing, people often intellectualise or censor their responses between an emotional reaction and a verbal report. In this study the empirical assessment options of skin conductance, peripheral skin temperature, respiration and heart rate (blood-volume-pulse) measured physiological reactions whilst making art. The rationale for conducting such empirical assessments is to establish whether a correlation can be found between artists’ affective descriptions of the art making experience and physiological responses of participating artists.

Hierdie artikel gee verslag oor ‘n gemengdemetode studie van die emosionele stemming van professionele kunstenaars tydens teken- en skilderaktiwiteite deur gebruik te maak van semigestruktureerde onderhoude. Die ervaringsdata is aangevul deur empiriese eksperimente. Tydens ervaringsdata-insameling, as gevolg van etlike lae komplekse verwerking, is mense soms geneig om hulle antwoorde in die tydsverloop tussen ‘n emosionele reaksie en ‘n verbale verslag te intellektualiseer of sensor. Hierdie studie gebruik empiriese bepalings om velkonduktiwiteit, omtreksveltemperatuur, asemhaling en hartklop te bepaal. Die grondrede vir hierdie empiriese bepalings is om vas te stel of daar ‘n korrelaat bestaan tussen kunstenaars se emosionele beskrywings en hul fisiologiese respons tydens die verloop van kunsskep.