The displacement of traditional axioms of visual arts by new media and technology has necessitated a rethinking of the format of the pictorial image. Owing to the decline in value of the material art object as the necessary end of the creative process in contemporary art practices, art is left adrift in seemingly infinite possibilities: in structure, aesthetic form, and temporal space-now unable to speak to the past or to the future. Could it be that contemporary debates about the demise of the visual arts are in fact lamentations that highlight the anxiety of a society that has been separated from traditional structures of cultural identity into a flux of creative reorganization? And is this creative shift, while instigator of cultural angst and unease, also an opening to new formats and potentialities, offering new possibilities of what might constitute structure and materiality of the pictorial image? "Painting as Metaphor: Rethinking Pictorial Structure and Materiality" examines these questions. --- Sarah Nind is a professional artist and a professor in the Faculty of Art, OCAD University, Toronto, Canada, and holds a PhD in Media and Communications from the European Graduate School. Her photo-based works have been exhibited nationally and internationally. Collections include the National Gallery of Canada and the Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography.