Inhabiting Inbetweens: Making Paintings and Being Made

Abstract

The DocFA project, Inhabiting In-betweens: Making Pictures and Being Made is a visual, material exploration based in studio practice and informed by theoretical investigation. The research undertaken investigates a methodology for painting practice that seeks to situate, embody, and enact a near synchronous receptive and responsive exchange between the painter and painting within the flux of indeterminate practice. The project applies the metaphor ‘in-betweenness’ to explore a transformative time-space wherein the painter and the painting are simultaneously distinct and mutually codependent. I argue that experiential states of being in-between create dynamic conditions that vitalise painting practice by encompassing indeterminacy, chance, contingency, and novel emergence. In accord with the experiential basis of this research, the project locates its philosophical and conceptual ground within Phenomenological and Daoist thinking. I apply phenomenal concepts both to my specific experiences when painting and also to pictorial space itself, and argue that through the operation of in-betweenness the make-up of self and picture are mutually informing. By undertaking this project I seek to contribute to the field of contemporary painting practices, and in particular, painting practices employing indeterminate methodologies.