Painting is driven by the application and disruption of production rules. The rules are developed ‘a priori’, but the principle aesthetic and affective experiences emerge during the application of the rules and again later when considering the work which has emerged from the rules. For the artist, there are three phases of experience. Firstly, there is the conceptual phase, when the design or production rules are devised. This is followed by two interrelated phases of reflection. These two phases may be described as ‘a posteriori’ to describe the experience of seeing the completed work and ‘praesens’ to describe experiencing the work as it emerges in the present. Like the German present tense Präsens, praesens is about the ‘momentary now’, which is one of the primary experiences as the painting unfolds and reveals and possibly deviates from the underlying rules.

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