The aim of my research project is to open a strain of enquiry between post-continental philosophy and contemporary abstract painting aesthetics as a form of speculation on the assemblage of immanence, complexity and emergence. Informed by Manuel DeLanda’s ‘neo-materialism’, Jane Bennett’s ‘vital materialism’ and Levi Bryant’s ‘object oriented materialism’, set within a framework of the ‘geo-philosophy’ of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari. When painting becomes animated by the immanent complexity of its own matter-energy, when painting is conceived of as a ‘diagram’ or ‘abstract machine’, the ‘thingness’ of its materiality presents us with unique objects and processes that affirm aesthetics as an integral source for philosophising matter.
or
‘The earths surface and the figments of the mind have a way of disintegrating into discrete regions of art. Various agents, both fictional and real, somehow trade places with each other – one cannot avoid muddy thinking when it comes to earth projects, or what I will call “abstract geology”. Ones mind and the earth are in a constant state of erosion, mental rivers wear away abstract banks, brain waves undermine cliffs of thought, ideas decompose into stones of unknowing, and conceptual crystallizations break apart into deposits of gritty reason.’
Robert Smithson ‘A Sedimentation of the mind: Earth Projects (1968)
abstractgeology 
Just found this blog! WOW. Brilliant stuff. m-
but who are you?
Excellent! Just came across your blog today! Thanks for some very interesting notions…
Thanks for visting, I’m still struggling with the matter and meaning of all this, as Serres tells us ‘Words fill our flesh and anaesthetize it… Militant egotists, we speak in order to drug ourselves’
Very excited to find this blog. I am an artist working with the liquid dynamics of paint.
During the process where the canvas is on the floor it becomes obvious that I am in collaboration with nature.
There can be rain, rivers, impacts, splashes, damns, sedimentary actions with the pigments slowly moving,ect…
I would call them “paintscapes” formed by the same forces that create landscapes. I am deeply affected after a session which often lasts an entire day. Being in the flow so to speak carries over as an after glow of sorts. The pathways in my brain must retain their sensitivity for a while lasting hours after painting. I begin to sense an overlap of experience between the geophysical creation mode of painting and operating within the subjective world of conveying and recieving. At those times the two seem perfectly related. This is where my fascination is pushing for more.
So It’s this feeling and near visualizing of the flows of ideas and emotions back and forth including the gradations of subtlies that seems to point to our very being as created and lived by the same forces.
In my view this process should not be called abstraction but “tuning in ism”. Tuning in to the forces that are at work.
When the work is done I like what you called it, a pseudo fossil.
Hi Craig, thanks for your thoughts. Its great to hear about your research in this area. The relation between geological processes and sensation in painting provides a great framework for a new theory of painting while also opening a space to reveal paintings relation to new materialism and philosophies of emergence.
I am also a painter interested in the materiality of paint. Great blog. WOW.
hi there,
I stumbled onto your blog this morning while cross-referencing Deleuze and non-representational art. So interesting to find that you are reading Ellsworth, Bennett, Morton, Bryant, Latour and others within an arts based research practice, just like me. I also work with the geologic and the Anthropocene as key concepts in my research practice, though I use (social) sculpture as my modality morso than painting, including working with glass, photography, installation, pedagogies and participatory methods. Are you a phd student as well? It could be good to have a conversation about this stuff sometime. Let me know. I’ll check back and see what’s new on your bog as well. Cheers, David