Alex Bacon considers painting in the digital age, addressing the idea "that painting does not have a single, essential status, but rather a multiple and constantly changing one, due to pressures both internal and external to it, and to art more broadly."

Bacon writes: "In a sense, painting has always existed in relation to technology, when the term is understood in its broad definition as the practical application of specialized knowledge: the brush, the compass, the camera obscura, photography, or the inkjet printer. However, it is only now that, along the lines of physical presence and a shared role as content-delivery systems, painting is so closely affiliated—morphologically, aesthetically, and conceptually—with the (digital) technologies it engages with. Today both artist and viewer share the experience of digital technologies as familiar, available, and omnipresent. An artist today is automatically involved with ways of looking, thinking, and acting that are conditioned by technology, even if their work is not ostensibly dealing directly with technological concerns."