The concept of art, which is one of the most important elements of the cultural components of the society from the past to the present, has always been mentioned in many idioms and proverbs. The purpose of this study is to examine the ideas of visual arts teachers about the concept of art by means of metaphors. The study group consists of 100 visual arts teachers working in the province of Agri in the academic year 2018-2019. Phenomenological design is used in this study. The data of the study was collected by asking each of the participants to complete the sentence "To me, art is like ........., because ..........." Content analysis method was used to analyze the data obtained from the participants' answers. According to the findings of the study, visual arts teachers' metaphoric perceptions of the concept of art were grouped under 8 categories. These are: 1. Art as an expression of life. 2. Art as a life source. 3. Art as a guiding, illuminating concept. 4. Art as a special field. 5. Art as an expression. 6. Art as communication tool. 7. Art as a search for beauty, 8. Art as an unlimited exploration area. As a result, it was found out that the visual arts teachers expressed the concept of art with many different metaphors. According to this, it was revealed that art teachers mostly considered art as an expression of life and a source of life.
Keywords: Art teachers, Visual art, Art, Education, Metaphor.