Thinking Like a Painter. A Phenomenological Approach to the Creative Experience in Painting.

The article proposes a phenomenological study of the creative movement in painting. With the collaboration of an artist, we have studied an experience of her for which we have obtained thanks to the elicitation interview method a detailed description in acts of the experience. The subjective data have been subsequently analyzed in order to reveal the general structure of the experience. Then, by using an eidetic variation in the Husserl’s tradition, we extracted from the latter the essential constituents of the experience. We discuss the potential universality of such structure before focusing on the relationship the painter entertains with the outer world and what is her ambition with regard to the reception of her art work.