This paper will explore the relationship between painting, photography and video. There are many painters who would fear some sense of loss if painting were to move towards the field of the digital, seeing painting as having an enduring strength due to its material presence and haptic nature. Alternatively, there are those who would see painting as condemned to irrelevance were it not to engage with technological aspects of the contemporary world. This paper seeks to avoid such a simple binary opposition. The reality is that the practice of painting and how it can engage with technology is more complex than a simple choice between an obstinate materiality or a disembodied virtual image. 

 

I suggest painting has a dual function, one "performative" the other "editorial". The first is what Jackson Pollock referred to when he said he was "in" his painting. This is the "I" that performs the painting as a process.  The second "I" is the editorial "I", deciding what goes into/onto a painting and what is allowed to stay. This is closer to the approach of painters such as David Reed or Fabian Marcaccio who assemble or create their work over time from an accumulation of layers or objects.  

 

If a finished painting represents the end of a process, the experience of making a painting, of it taking place over time (and of it being in a state of flux) may be better communicated via video rather than the static surface of the completed painting. In some seemingly contradictory way, video may help to keep us all “in the painting”. To further complicate matters there is another role painting can play according to Reed and that is to "humanise" technology. Both Reed and Stephen Ellis have also referred to the "moral" aspect of painting with one key factor being its "irreversibility" and the element of risk associated with this, which can be contrasted with the reversibility of digital processes. My most recent work alternates between painting (paint on canvas) and digital watercolour videos made using a digital microscope, seeking an emergent dialogue rather than contradiction. Neither painting nor technology can tell us the whole story of what it is to paint, but the movement between the two may help us see both differently.