The results of using paint in the production of work, leaves its history on the tools and equipment used. The process produces marks away from the final product that were created through the conscious activity of making, resulting in a subconscious, incidental, exterior gesture or mark. Artists like Susan Collis and Roy Lichtenstein have been influential to me because of their introspective attitudes towards their art practice. My examination led me to question the function and purpose of these marks once isolated. Through re-enactment, reproduction and illustration of specific marks I was able to distinguish between signs and marks.The signs are laid onto the canvas using the mute utilitarian colour of grey oil paint, maintaining ground within the tradition of painting. Signs contain meaning and are consciously and considerately created with intention of being viewed. Because signs are referential they involve prior knowledge as well as a moment of translation. Within image making signs are visual signifiers, and are clear referents. My signs are isolated studies of repeated gestures taken from within my painted language.The mark is a painted incident recorded in paint, often the result of an uncontrolled movement. This ensures that the role of the body becomes an integral aspect of mark making. The isolated mark contains no meaning and simply implies its own existence. I adorned the marks with their own appearance (making permanent the highlights and shadows of their form). This serves to illustrate and accentuate their own self contained futility, allowing them only to exist as semi real. I create my marks on board using a brightly coloured acrylic paint to accentuate the fallacy of the purposefully created mark. I do not let the paint brush touch the surface of the board, sometimes painting with my sleeve to literally illustrates the absence of the hand, or even with my head to highlight the nature of the investigation.I have created an open dialogue that questions my painted language through an exploration of functionality within images as a coordinated composition of both signs and marks. I chose to work within a limited pallet to prevent distraction from their function and manifestation. The final pieces in this examination have recorded a morphing between the two forms of language. Some works initially intended to be marks have become impregnated with meaning and so have evolved into signs (works 9 and 10). Others that were intended as signs have developed marks, in the sense that Walter Benjamin implies: that marks come from within or underneath, and appear rather than are made (work 8).Despite my efforts to disentangle the two elements within my painted language I have eventually found that it is not possible; they are inextricably linked, co-dependent and reliant on each other for the reading of the painted image. I have understood that it is fundamentally impossible to construct marks that contain no meaning, especially within the constraints of an artistic practice and a forced investigation; there is always something to be understood by their occurrence.Additionally throughout this investigation I have looked at Bernard Frieze, Zebedee Jones, Jason Martin, Alexis Harding and David Reed. The writings of Gerhard Richter, Walter Benjamin, Matthew Osborne, and Howard Caygill have also been influential.