What is a painting?

Yeah, paint is definitely a radical concept! Nowadays if we want to spam search engines we call absolutely anything a "painting".

If we want to describe an actual painting, we have to specify that it is "a physical object comprised of a substrate and an image, where the substrate could technically be anything at all but is most often a canvas, paper or board... and the image is created by application of one of many varieties of liquid-ish medium, commonly known as 'paint', by a crazed eccentric person (who may have any combination of: a mind overflowing with ideas ranging to no ideas, a lot of talent ranging to little talent, years of training and practice ranging to no training, driven by insane sexual / financial / competitive / creative / survival motivations ranging to totally undriven) literally picks up the applicator tool with their own hand and manipulates the tool in such a way to create the image.