Art production involves a range of imaginative and critical thinking processes through which artists create images or objects. Artworks have the capacity to demonstrate individual ideas, emotions, and values as well as cultural and social contexts. According to Frederick Spratt, in Art Production in Discipline-Based Art Education, art production makes a primary contribution to the understanding of art because the direct experience of creating art uniquely leads to certain insights into many aspects of meaning conveyed in works of art.
Artists are people who create imaginative and inventive visual images and forms.
Throughout time artists have contributed to our understanding of the world in which they lived. Much as cave art reflects the primitive tools and primal needs of an ancient time, computer-generated art mirrors our contemporary world. Unlike artists of earlier times, however, today's artists have at their disposal a wide variety of tools and materials to express their emotions and interpret their surroundings. Artists are those people who visually guide us through contemplation of our environment. In short, today's artists are discovered working in many places and using a wide assortment of materials and tools as they create images and objects that express ideas or emotion and which serve as documents of culture, time, and place.