This major canvas by Takao Tanabe was produced at a breakthrough moment in his career. After his time in New York in the early 1950s, Tanabe longed to return to the mecca of mid-century abstraction. After growing artistic recognition and global travels funded by the Emily Carr Scholarship and a Canada Council Grant, by the late 1960s he had returned to New York. It was there his work began an important transition. Having adhered to the prevailing hard-edge approach to painting in the early 1970s, Tanabe began to employ sumi-e ink techniques he learned in Japan to his expressions of landscape. On beautiful display here, Tanabe employs his thinned acrylic paint in washes of colour, resulting in the diffuse, ethereal, near brush-less aesthetic for which he would become so renowned and beloved. It was also in this period that Tanabe was approached by Toronto gallerist Mira Godard, who sought exclusive representation of his work. Works from Tanabe were included in the inaugural exhibition of the Marlborough-Godard gallery in 1972, the same year this striking canvas was produced.