This untitled (ca. 1953) work comes from one of more than 200 notebooks and sketchbooks that Betty Parsons filled over the course of her career, its upper edge bearing the characteristic line of holes of spiral binding. These sketchbooks were Parsons’s constant companions throughout her travels and played a fundamental part in her artmaking practice. As art historian Lisa Peters has observed, her sketchbooks “provided a forum for Parsons to work out her visual ideas, reflect on her experiences, summon memories, and capture emotions.” This work is a key example of Parsons’s lively sense of color, with a range of blues and purples peppering a field of amber. Further activating the compositional surface, Parsons used the back of her paintbrush to etch into the wet gouache.