Lee Krasner was painting in a gestural Abstract Expressionist manner when, in 1946, she became interested in systems of writing and letter forms. The result was a series of thirty-one paintings called Little Image, made over four years. To create them Krasner abandoned the easel and laid her canvas flat. She organized each work in a grid format, applying paint in dabs and controlled pours. Within this process, she explored the painterly possibilities between the extremes of order and chance. With allusions to both writing and pictography, Little Image hovers between pure abstraction and figuration.