Stanley Whitney has experimented for decades with a single compositional strategy rendering grids with seemingly inexhaustible variations of color. He has described his process as similar to the call and response flow of traditional African-American music, with one color calling forth another and dictating the structure of the work. Whitney draws inspiration from a wide range of historical and cultural references including Roman architecture, American quilt making, and jazz, which he listens to while working in the studio at Two Palms.

Whitney has been making monotypes at Two Palms since 2016 when he first started experimenting with printing images from wood plates, using a hydraulic press to transfer his images from plate to paper. In doing so, each of Whitney’s monotypes is embossed with the grain of wood from the wooden plate, lending them a mysterious quality as the wood grain interacts with pigment.