Dr. Haroutounian has spent a lifetime working in the arts with gifted students in performance, as well as helping teachers to identify and develop talent. Artistic Ways of Knowing: How to Think Like an Artist is the result of her insights and experience, examining the perceptual and cognitive processes inherent in learning and interpretation. Understanding these processes allows teachers and homeschool co-op instructors to develop creativity in the classroom, nurture talented students, and encourage everyone to “think like an artist.”

The book begins with perspectives of artistic and aesthetic knowing from artists and scholars across the fields of education. It then explores each element of artistic knowing and includes “Sparkler Experiences” that provide hands-on workshops to help students realize how to think and perceive in each art form: the visual arts, music, dance/movement, and theater/drama.

Artistic Ways of Knowing is a text for gifted and arts college coursework and a resource for professional development. But it is also of wider interest, as the goal is to provide readers with a more thorough understanding of how artists think and perform and how this kind of knowing expands in depth and breadth beyond cognitive/academic parameters. The ultimate goal is to encourage everyone to experience artistic “knowing.”

As befits a book about the arts, this book contains classic works of art in full color that can be studied in the classroom, as well as unique photographs that illustrate aspects of the creative process.