Kline worked in color throughout his career, first in his
             figurative work of the 1930's and 40's and later in his mature abstract-expressionist style.
             "Basic to most abstract expressionist painting were the attention paid to surface qualities,
             i.e., qualities of brushstroke and texture; the use of huge canvases; the adoption of an
             approach to space in which all parts of the canvas played an equally vital role in the total
             work; the harnessing of accidents that occurred during the process of painting; the
             glorification of the act of painting itself as a means of visual communication; and the
             attempt to transfer pure emotion directly onto the canvas."2 Kline's new style was
             completely influenced by this new form of abstraction, especially how he used the
             materials and what types he used. Inexpensive commercial paints and large house
             painter's brushes were the instruments he used to build his graphic paintings of jagged but
             controlled bars of black paint on white canvas, creating positive shapes with the white
             areas as well as with the black strokes. Growing up around the coal mining business,
             Kline often uses the powerful industrial and machine forms common in that scene in his
             ...