Through the process of interviews, oral history recordings, and surveys, this research study had the goal of rendering a better understanding of the differences between the work and processes of professionally trained artists, self-taught artists and laypersons, and lay groundwork for further investigations on the subject. A secondary goal was to get a better idea of how creativity and artistic process are influenced by different individual’s life experiences, for example, how much training they had, how the opinions of those around them influenced their views, and other factors that may lead to the observable differences in the study. A tertiary goal is a possibility for participants to become more aware of their own creative processes. Do they know how they create? Do they know what they spend the most time doing in the creative process? Participation in the study could allow them to discover more about their own processes.
The results of the study are complied into quantitative results based on a Sondra Perl study, and then examined from a qualitative perspective, to see what the author found to be similarities and differences between the three case study examples.