Touch: an enquiry

This thesis forms part of a practice-based enquiry into ‘touch’ from a painter’s perspective. I am investigating touch as a three-way interplay: 1. the act of touch at work in the studio; 2. the sense of touch experienced with and in my body while engaging with my own work and with the paintings of Robert Ryman; and 3. the presence of touch, materially and metaphorically, in the work as a result of my reflective practice in response to an analysis of 1 and 2. I examine the making of two sections of studio work, Touch Screen and Where’s the ’Ouch?; analyse the findings of three days spent with the Ryman installation in the Hallen für Neue Kunst, Schaffhausen, Switzerland; and reflect on the making of a third section of my studio work, Blanks in response to the Hallen experience.