This practice-based art project explores latency in relation to the way viewers engage with images and in the context of images themselves. Through an exploration of the medium of painting, the project aims to open up territories of speculation about disruptive liminal moments, temporality, the unknown, theatre, narrative structures, and painting as theatre. Disruptive liminal moments are studied particularly in relation to images that sit on the threshold of catalysing alternate interactions with the world. The project’s interest in temporality spans from an image’s propulsion toward a future state to the notion of feeling connected yet displaced from historical places and times. The sublime threshold, the dangerous, the exotic and the other create the context for an inquiry into the terrain of the unknown. The parallels between theatre and painting are explored through the three perspectives of illusion, amplification and watching. Through the processes of painting, this study attempts to open up avenues of narrative; particularly in terms of an investigation into the way still images disrupt the momentum of narrative.