ABSTRACT What is visual art making, the artistic creative process, and how does it work? These questions fuelled an investigation at first theoretical, then incorporating an empirical study centered on attaining understanding relating to the elements and dynamics involved in making visual art. The resultant study aims to offer an approach to gaining comprehensive understanding of the artistic creative process, an understanding that may inform art teaching practice, so that art teachers may better understand the related dynamics of their pedagogical processes. Historically the artistic creative process has been accepted as one consisting of different sequential stages of development. This view however, is evolving due to the growing understanding of interrelated dynamics of life processes offered by, for example, neurological studies of the brain. New thinking links earlier philosophical and psychological ideas presented by such thinkers as James (1894) and Dewey (1934), to the work of Baars (1999), Brown (2000), Ellis (1999), Zeki (2000), in offering a deeper understanding of the natural human creative process. The reflective aspect of the artistic creative process is thus related to the way that we process information every minute of our lives; essentially it is the way we progress through life, minute by minute, learning and evolving, affirming self through finding meaning. Study of current theory relating to the processes of the brain inevitably incorporates modern thinking that revolves around dynamic processes. Originating in thermodynamics, Chaos Theory has travelled far from physics to become incorporated into a broad spectrum of disciplines. It offers a common language that relates to the dynamics of human nature, and as such is totally applicable to areas of learning and human interaction. Here used metaphorically, Chaos Theory serves to elucidate interactive aspects of the discipline of art making, with much to offer an understanding of the artistic creative process as it describes exactly the same process of change and growth through experience. A metaphorical use of the language of Chaos Theory provides visual art making with a means of sharing ideas with other academic disciplines that also constantly deal with the dynamics of the human condition, found for example in the close connections between the methods of exploration of both artists and scientists. In studying the phenomenon of ‘scale’ the physicist Feigenbaum commented on the connections between perceptions of artists and those of scientists, pointing to the way in which their perceptions and analysis of things coincide (Gleick, 1987). The visual analysis evident in the work of Turner or Ruskin reflects the same process of detailed conceptual exploration of material collected by the senses as that of a student of any field of scientific exploration. Chaos Theory is important also in that it provides a language accessible by varying levels of expertise, whether at a simple metaphorical or a more sophisticated level. This work charts these dimensions because “The challenge is to reverse the disconnectedness of the present world and to develop a curriculum that is not based on separateness of knowledge from life and being, but upon their inherent unity and integration” (Lovat and Smith, 1995, p.248). / PhD Doctorate