Texture in painting is the look and feel of the canvas

Canvas

Canvas is an extremely heavy-duty plain-woven fabric used for making sails, tents, marquees, backpacks, and other items for which sturdiness is required. It is also popularly used by artists as a painting surface, typically stretched across a wooden frame...

. It is based on the paint, and its application, or the addition of materials such as ribbon, metal, wood, lace, leather and sand. The concept of 'painterliness' also has bearing on texture. The texture stimulates two different sense

Sense

Senses are physiological capacities of organisms that provide inputs for perception. The senses and their operation, classification, and theory are overlapping topics studied by a variety of fields, most notably neuroscience, cognitive psychology , and philosophy of perception...

s; sight and touch. There are four types of texture in art: actual texture, simulated texture, abstract texture, and invented texture.

Actual texture

This is a combination of how the painting looks, and how it feels to the touch. It is associated both with the heavy build up of paint, such as an impasto

Impasto

In English, the borrowed Italian word impasto most commonly refers to a technique used in painting, where paint is laid on an area of the surface very thickly, usually thickly enough that the brush or painting-knife strokes are visible. Paint can also be mixed right on the canvas...

 effect, or the addition of materials.

Simulated texture

Creating the visual effect of texture without actually adding texture. For instance, a texture created to look like something other than paint on a flat surface. An example is Cataract 3, painted in 1967 by Bridget Riley

Bridget Riley

Bridget Louise Riley CH CBE is an English painter who is one of the foremost proponents of Op art.-Early life:...

, which creates the illusion of ripples in the paper through the repetition of lines.

Abstract texture

Texture that does not directly represent the object it is connected with but the concept of the object is translated in textural patterns.

Invented texture

A creative way of adding alternate materials to create an interesting texture. Invented texture typically appears in abstract works

Abstract art

Abstract art uses a visual language of form, color and line to create a composition which may exist with a degree of independence from visual references in the world. Western art had been, from the Renaissance up to the middle of the 19th century, underpinned by the logic of perspective and an...

, as they are entirely non-objective.