Epistemic problems exist when researching painting as adult learning. Painting has non-linear emergent properties. When video-recording and images are used to enable inquiry, and there is a desire to adhere to hermeneutic principles, then painting begins to inform the research output. In this way the emergent content determined the emerging form of the research, as a process of co-emergence. Digital media used to convey as painting and learning resulted in an emergent painterly methodology. Earlier research on emergence remains bound by conventional epistemic limits. It is reasoned that use of visual digital media can now bypass overly simplistic research representations by directly applying visual processes. An attempt is made to demonstrate the non-linear origin of this article. Form and content interchange in ways that are telling of the way learning takes place through painting, or the adoption of painterly methodologies, more broadly. (Contains 3 figures.)