This is a practice-led PhD and the submission includes a written thesis and a comprehensive body of paintings made during the research period. The initial aim of this research developed out of an interest in what appeared to be a clear binary opposition between the structure and understanding of the picture plane within abstract and figurative painting. Traditionally a figurative picture plane tends to achieve pictorial depth through Cartesian perspective. Conversely, abstract picture planes were flattened within modernism. I am interested in creating a pictorial space in painting - image painted on canvas - that has the potential to accommodate a more active viewer. This is a pictorial space in which the surface and pictorial depth do not sit in opposition to each other and the viewer oscillates between the two. The research initiated with a historical survey of pictorial space specifically analysing the difference between Renaissance and modernist space. The research methodology then develops key concepts from Gilles Deleuze's philosophical writings. They are employed within the studio as a system of methods, which have enabled me to re-think the formal characteristic of painting towards creating a new pictorial model. The key concepts within this investigative methodology include: The Fold; Smooth and Striated space in relation to Beauty and Sublime; The Monad; The Figural; and The Virtual. A central premise of the research, both practically as a studio investigation in painting and theoretically, explores the potential of the internal pictorial plane of painting becoming a virtual, complex and plural space more akin to the cinematic. Giles Deleuze's concept of 'The Fold' is at the core of the research and provides a method of thinking through a studio painting practice that might reactivate painterly, abstract and pictorial space for a contemporary audience.