The article endorses a dissatisfaction with Freud's general accounts of art while maintaining that psychoanalysis does offer a variety of ways of approaching the art work and the artist's own relation to it. It discusses the process of creative work and draws possible links between studio and consulting room, especially as this addresses the person of the artist and the person of the analyst. I use the work of Joyce McDougall as regards the value of the information gained by considering the differences in artists as artists and artists as analysands. While proposing that the art work must be met on its own terms, and developing this through a discussion of the work of Martin Creed, I also see the theories of psychoanalysis and the practice of the consulting room as presenting perspectives that contribute to understanding the meaning of art for both artist and viewer.