Like an early bird’s view from the upper floor of a skyscraper on a wet morning, Mark Tobey’s streaks of bright red and yellow splashed among blocks and scribbles of white against a black background suggest the start of the day’s traffic in a relatively deserted avenue of a modern American city. About eighteen years earlier Tobey started painting city scenes using the “white writing” he based on close study of Asian calligraphy. “White writing” eventually came to characterize Tobey’s mature style. Recalling Chinese brush painting, “white writing” simultaneously enclosed, masked, and revealed form. Tobey was especially fond of applying this technique to his depictions of electric city nights.