Evidence of artistic gesture in modernist painting involved occurrences between the artist, materials and their painting supports. While these physical traces connect to acts in time and artistic processes, audiences were invited to reflect upon their own associations towards canonised histories of painting through their viewing experiences. However, by positioning abstraction within frameworks of both Western and non-Western thinking, I believe the semiotics of mark-making can be universalised while the significance of material primacy and specificity becomes peripheral. In adopting an embodied approach to forms of painting surfaces, my research project titled Between Traces/Beyond Screens, incorporates varying points of contact between mediums to foresee audience engagement, allowing for a plurality of viewpoints and perspectives. This results in a variety of encounters between both audiences and artistic materials, which positions abstraction as an autonomous, limitless creative device. By creating painting supports that reference the biographic motif of the folding screen, I am able to explore relationships between surfaces, planes and objects. Ultimately, my method-based approaches become layered within an imagined, unfixed hierarchy of gesture and materials, where aspects of spatiality and mobility become integral to the viewing experience.