This project is situated within the context of imaging nature, focussing on one particular element, stone. The central aims of this research are to investigate the materiality of stone through the 'disciplines of painting and drawing, and the influence of the compositional concept of figure and ground in constructing the imagery. The written research provides a brief overview of geology as a scientific context for the conception and content of the images in the body of work. The formative processes that contribute to the materiality of stone are examined and the role of geological time frames in challenging the perception of stone as unchanging is described. The relevance of the geological processes of metamorphoses and mutability to the conceptual and visual structure of the images is examined. The body of work from the research project is contextually positioned within a comparative survey of imaging nature in the Renaissance, the period of the Enlightenment, and the 20th and 21st centuries. The concept of figure and ground is examined. analysing its implications in philosophy, science, psychology and psychoanalysis. The centrality of the concept as a compositional and psychological strategy in image making is considered in relation to a range of 20th and 21st century paintings, including those from this research project. The significance of employing contemporary types of mapping in making of images referring to the natural environment, and the effect that these types of mapping have when applied to pictorial construction, is considered. A range of paintings including images from this body of work, are surveyed. Knowledge and insights gained have provided an impetus for experiments with new methodologies, techniques and materials in the studio. The results of this experimentation enabled a more precise articulation, in a pictorial sense, of the ideas and conceptual approaches developed in this research project.