Little has been researched about the professional artist's preferred style of thinking, his/her manner of acquiring and utilizing knowledge, and how it affects the learning process. This investigation used a revised method of naturalistic inquiry for the purpose of developing a research method that was responsive to the uniqueness of artistic concerns; one that was conscious of the idiosyncratic issues that affect mental development in regard to obtaining knowledge. The protocol of traditional interview reporting was expanded by addressing the peculiarity of the "self" in the collection of the data. For example, respondents' names were used in the reporting of the results, thus, crediting the comments made. Interviews were conducted with highly successful and well-known visual artists to determine their patterns of thinking and learning. An analysis of this observation, as a self-knowledge of self-report method, was used to determine what form artistic intelligence took and what common characteristics existed that comprised this particular group of learners. The intention was to develop some recognizable characteristics of artistic intelligence (criteria) that would enable the educational community to understand better this type of thinker in a learning situation. The assumption made in this project was the level of mental perception and awareness of an artist, based on the manipulation of figural structures, is a thinking style that creates specific behavioral characteristics not common to other populations. In turn, these characteristics influence the learning ability of such individuals in an educational setting and affect the development of growth in regard to obtaining knowledge. These assumptions were confirmed. Other findings indicated the need for the artistic individual to constantly feed the "self" to obtain the end-result of being creative and producing a product. The results also indicated that the artist felt different from others and created unique coping mechanism. (Author/DB)