Abstract Painting Practice: Expanding in a Virtual World

This paper sets out to describe, through a demo for the TVX Conference, how virtual reality (VR) painting software is beginning to open up as a new medium for visual artists working in the field of abstract painting.The demo achieves this by describing how an artist who usually makes abstract paintings with paint and canvas in a studio, that is those existing as physical objects in the world, encounters and negotiates the process of making abstract paintings in VR using Tilt Brush software and Head-Mounted Displays (HMD). This paper also indicates potential future avenues for content creation in this emerging field and what this might mean not only for the artist and the viewer, but for art institutions trying to provide effective methods of delivery for innovative content in order to develop and grow new audiences.