I believe that a creative person is someone who first understands the theories in his area. Then with his imagination, he exploits, expands and perhaps even push ideas to their limits or even breaks rules. Any other discoveries based on ignorance of theories is purely accidental or the work of a genius. I wouldn't go that far. One can come a long way with intuition and some people might learn more from looking at examples than from abstract theories. But theories of perception, composition and colors will provide us with a language to express and think about what we see in a picture. They may even function as a life line to get us back onto solid ground when occasionally our intuition fails us. I imagine there are very few people for which they will not be of any help at all in the creative process.

-- I'm not mad at you, just Westphalian.