North Carolina native Kenneth Noland was one of the masters of abstract expressionism. Color and control are two dominant themes in Noland's work. In the artist's own words (as quoted in The New York Times) "The thing in painting is to find a way to get color down, to float it without bogging the picture down in Surrealism, Cubism, or systems of structure... In the best color painting, structure is nowhere evident, or nowhere self-revealing."