Over the course of five decades, California-based painter Max Cole (born 1937) has refined her visual language into a series of vertical and horizontal lines, and a restrained palette of gray, black and white.

With up to 80 layers of paint, her paintings also comprise areas of unpainted linen, subtly interchanging the texture of paint with the texture of fabric. Upon closer inspection, these paintings reveal tiny, imperfect hatch marks that, when examined from afar, oscillate. As Cole says, "The result is quiet, inward and meditative, transcending the physical." Cole...