This investigation reaches beyond one single discipline or mode of discourse, exploring current possibilities for contemporary abstract painting and spiritual experience. Types of experience associated with previous 'spiritual' abstract painting are explored in view of the need for new languages for abstraction and spirituality in both word and image. This is developed alongside. the recognition of the importance of engagement with the contemporary world for abstract painting (in this case via technology). The investigation is given a theoretical critical context through reference to and analysis of writers such as Donald Kuspit, Peter Fuller, James Elkins and Jeremy Gilbert-Rolfe and three leading painters Gerhard Richter, Jan McKeever and David Reed along with a record and analysis of my own painting and digital images. Abstract painting and spiritual experience are subjected to critique and reinterpretation within this investigation and a contemporary concept of the spiritual emerges through an opening of thought found within postmodernism and a renewed critical interest in negative theology. .' Negative theology is seen as having similarities to a broader apophatic outlook found both in contemporary thought and art. This leads to a contemporary model of abstract painting and spiritual experience using a language of doubt through terms such as the unknowable, unrepresentable or unintelligible. The initial process based paintings of this investigation explored problems surrounding authorship and of authorial suspension via process, however a counter and more positive aspect of process emerged from an alternative alchemical or hypostatic view of process painting as a deep. engagement with matter. The limitations of process painting are considered, for example, basic repetitiveness, lack of surface and form, lack of imaginative engagement and most importantly the lack of risk on an emotional or psychological level. Previous modernist models of spiritual abstraction are seen to be made problematic by contemporary critical theory resulting in the need for a new, contemporary language for spiritually motivated abstract painting. Through the use of image deconvolution software (normally used within the sciences) relatively formless process paintings gave rise to new digitally generated form. Subsequent paintings were a response to the potential of these digital forms arid reintroduced both brushstrokes and form within an abstract, illusionistic space. This investigation explores a language of the unknown and unfamiliar within a broader context of doubt as positive strategy. Process and technology along with a critical reintroduction of authorial subjectivity and imaginative response gave rise to strange and unpredictable paintings which exist within a contemporary discourse of the apophatic, a mode in which, I argue, a contemporary form of spirituality may also be encountered.

The aim of the research that this thesis is based on is to explore the theoretical problems raised by the concept of photographic abstraction. These consist in the tension between the two aspects of the photographic sign, the indexical and iconic, and are examined in the context of the particular exploration of the empty space in abstract photography which I have pursued through my practice.

Algebraic geometry in positive characteristic has a quite different flavour than in characteristic zero. Many of the pathologies disappear when a variety admits a lift to characteristic zero. It is known since the sixties that such a lift does not always exist. However, for applications it is sometimes enough to lift a variety dominating the given variety, and it is natural to ask when this is possible. The main result of this dissertation is the construction of a smooth projective variety over any algebraically closed field of positive characteristic that cannot be dominated by another smooth projective variety admitting a lift to characteristic zero. We also discuss some cases in which a dominating liftable variety does exist.

In [2], Dan Anderson and Andrea Frazier introduced a generalized theory of factorization. Given a relation τ on the nonzero, nonunit elements of an integral domain D, they defined a τ-factorization of a to be any proper factorization a = λa1 · · · an where λ is in U (D) and ai is τ-related to aj, denoted ai τ aj, for i not equal to j . From here they developed an abstract theory of factorization that generalized factorization in the usual sense. They were able to develop a number of results analogous to results already known for usual factorization. Our work focuses on the notion of τ-factorization when the relation τ has characteristics similar to those of coprimeness. We seek to characterize such τ-factorizations. For example, let D be an integral domain with nonzero, nonunit elements a, b ∈ D. We say that a and b are comaximal (resp. v-coprime, coprime ) if (a, b) = D (resp., (a, b)v = D, [a, b] = 1). More generally, if ∗ is a star-operation on D, a and b are ∗-coprime if (a, b)∗ = D. We then write a τmax b (resp. a τv b, a τ[ ] b, or a τ∗ b) if a and b are comaximal (resp. v -coprime, coprime, or ∗-coprime).

My paintings are done from my memory of nature experienced at different moments in time and place in Canada and Europe, discovered during my frequent travels. Colour, light, movement, smell and sound recalled in memory, lead to abstract formulations in which an expressive softness is mixed with harsh reality.

My paintings are done from my memory of nature experienced at different moments in time and place in Canada and Europe, discovered during my frequent travels. Colour, light, movement, smell and sound recalled in memory, lead to abstract formulations in which an expressive softness is mixed with harsh reality.

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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Sydney, 2006. / Title from title screen (viewed 26 February 2007). Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy to the Sydney College of the Arts. Includes bibliographical references. Also issued in print.

One significant feature of this dissertation is an alternative reading of an eminent thinker of the Enlightenment such as Kant, specifically in the arena of art theory and art history. In so doing, one cannot claim that contemporary theory is free of past shortcomings that characterize the assumptions of the Enlightenment; neither should we forget that the past contains the seeds for future theoretical and practical directions. The focus of this dissertation is to elucidate how Kant's conception of fine art can be reinterpreted in such a way that it can be perceived as both Modernist and Postmodernist. Initially, I state the position of Kant in terms of a Formalist understanding of art. This focus on the form of an artwork coheres with certain basic Modernist tenets. Kant's aesthetics is shown to converge with that of the Modernist art critic, Clement Greenberg. Based on this Modernist reading of Kant, I analyze the paintings of Newman and Hoffman, who are both Abstract Expressionists. Thereafter, I question Kantian and Modernist aesthetics with the use of Postmodern theories. The Formalist work of Abstract Expressionism is critiqued first from the perspective of Pop art strategies and then by using the philosophical stance of Conceptual art. Lastly, Kant is reinterpreted in the light of Postmodern theories, such as the linguistic turn, the sublime and the metaphorical nature of art. In exploring the overlapping of Kant's aesthetics with Postmodernism, the boundaries between Modernism and Postmodernism become somewhat blurred. In this way, Newman is reevaluated in such a way as to eschew a purely Formalist critique and to offer a critical perspective closer to a Postmodern viewpoint. / Art History, Visual Arts and Music / (M.A. (Art History))

I create images in a painterly manner illustrating a visual dialog, which suggests simultaneous moments, yet are actually a separated collision of moments and time. I have stretched these ideas from a slowed manipulation of time, to a calculated capture of segmented moments. My work undermines the importance of the decisive moment theory. This theory was the catalyst for my new series, VISUAL STAMP. "The decisive moment, it is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as the precise organization of forms which gives that event its proper expression." - Henri Cartier-Bresson I am conveying space and time on a single plane in a similar way to how we perceive, process, and retain information visually. The discarded moments in our perception are what I am interested in capturing. We do not view life in a frozen millisecond. Contemporary modes of perception involve the sensorial experience of viewing thousands of movements in small bursts of time that are often left behind, and forgotten. By layering images I am illustrating gaps from one moment to the next. My interest in using the insignificant event to create an aesthetic has become a personal visual stamp. This series embraces the discarded aspects of our visual interpretation of the objects and places we see in everyday life.