I believe that art is an effort to communicate. The message communicated might be an idea, a feeling, or a story. The visual artist must communicate this message without words, and hopefully in a way that words cannot.
I have a M.A. in Depth Psychology, which is built on the work of Carl Jung. Depth psychology seeks insight into the human unconscious using dream analysis, art therapy, mythology, and dance interpretation, among other things. My masters thesis involved creating ceramic sculptures of dream images and analysing those dreams using depth psychology methods.