In this paper, I will explore how grids manifest in two ways. I will write about grids in terms of networks of painters and a history of painting, and will be using Mikhail Bakhtin’s notion of dialogism and David Joselit’s Painting Beside Itself to explain how an ever-evolving grid of influences can be formed. I will also write about grids in relation to my work, both physically and conceptually. Painting’s history of movements that is in constant rotation has come to a point where one could ask whether every painting has already been made. This idea only provides a greater need and challenge to create work that expands upon old moves and discovers new ones.

This paper examines the medium of painting as object and a site for experimentation and looks at artists such as Jonathan Lasker, Imi Knoebel, and Ruth Root and movements such as Hard Edge Abstraction and Minimalism. Through this paper I seek to question whether it is possible to remove outside conceptual concerns from art in order to create a language of color and form that only makes sense in relation to itself and its network.