Painting research: Challenges and opportunities of intimacy and depth

This article demonstrates the challenges and opportunities of engaging art materials as an intimate mode of enquiry. Painting is used to investigate the writer’s biases and resistance towards research itself and to explore the method of ‘response art’. Using images to venture into unfamiliar territory, the writer excavates her preconceived attitudes and gains a deep understanding of her relationship to research. This work helps her reconcile artistic ways of investigation with research, strengthening her ability to understand and engage a range of creative and traditional methods of enquiry