How artists create: Creative process and multivariate factors

• Interviews with professional French creators are analysed using a quantitative and qualitative approach.
• Artists spontaneously make reference to the four P's of creativity and elements of the multivariate approach.
• Personal characteristics such as gender, domain, and experience shape the discourse of artists.
• An action perspective on the creative process reveals six main stages of creativity in art.
• These findings have important implications to understand and enhance artistic creativity.

This study sought to identify the factors that artists consider important for their creativity and to reconstruct, from interviews, the stages of their creative activity. For this purpose, 27 interviews with professional artists were analyzed using a double approach. First, a quantitative analysis of interviews and associated self-report questionnaires was performed. Second, a qualitative coding grid was applied to a representative subset of the interviews to uncover stages of activity and the interaction between creator and the material and social world. Results are discussed according to the multivariate approach and in light of activity theory and its emphasis on situated, goal-directed and meaningful action. Findings concerning the creative process and the factors involved are finally considered with respect to teaching creativity and art.