In painting, all occurrences of rhythm by definition happen on the surface of the canvas. But where is the surface of a painting, and what are its limitations? The surface of painting can be understood to be a property of both the semantic field and the physical object. Material evidence constituted by the physical buildup of paint, brush marks, and other effects related to the actual canvas itself, naturally stands in the way of recognition of the surface as surface: the more closely we examine the surface of the canvas physically, the more elusive recognition of the surface becomes—the more it presents itself as a physical thing among other things around us. The alternative, a semantic reading of the surface of the canvas, inserts something which distances us from the sense of its manifestation, via perception, as a physical surface: according to the semantic reading we experience the canvas in terms of discursive meaning, but in the process we risk losing the perceptual awareness of the surface as surface.