Study Of A Fluid Body, 2018 was made at a time when Payne was using painting as a way to liberate their sculpture practice. This painting highlights their interest in the process of psychic automatism and automatic drawing; drawing with a concept but no final image in mind. Payne was interested in the idea of making a scribble or a sketch and giving it permanence by setting it in resin, preserving an intuitive and temporary moment like a fossil. To do this, Payne looked at creating simplified symbolic images of female bodies with the final aim of representing a borderless, fluid body.

Payne often finds herself looking back to this piece. The work actually coincides with a piece of fiction that Payne has recently been writing. In the short story, a character’s body becomes a mercury-like liquid after death. In Study Of A Fluid Body, 2018 Payne presents this moment as the distorted body fluidly spreads to the edges of the canvas; the applied resin gives the effect that the work is forever wet and thus, forever in motion.