Art practice as research casts art making as inquiry - as a particularly experiential and constructivist process of learning in which imaginative synthesis and creative image making are ways of constructing knowledge. This article explores how art making functions as research through the creation of visual images, especially images that picture concepts, to create new insights and transform perceptions. It follows a path from mental images that mediate conceptualization in the mind to visible images in the world that shape thought in the social realm. To do this, it takes an interdisciplinary approach, exploring concepts from cognitive science, metaphor theory, and the sociocultural theory of mind, and presenting relevant examples from science and art to explain those concepts. (Julia Marshall)