Mary Corse (b. 1945, Berkeley, CA; lives and works in Los Angeles) is associated with the 1960s Light & Space Movement of southern California, and is primarily known for her minimalist, monochromatic paintings, which explore the relationship between materiality and perception. Since the mid-1960s, Corse has developed an innovative technique that involves mixing acrylic paint with microspheres—tiny glass beads commonly used in the white lines of lane dividers on highways—and painting vertical bands onto the canvas. These fields have an illuminating effect, so that as viewers move in front of the painting, oscillating bands of varying color and texture are exposed, darkening and brightening before their eyes. Although Corse’s paintings are minimal in their composition, the artist’s hand is clearly and deliberately present in the brushwork on the surface of the paintings. The shifting light across the canvas can either expose the brushworks and texture of the microspheres, or flatten it so that the canvas appears as a more uniform monochromatic surface. Over the past 10 years, Corse has introduced primary colors into her work, exploring how human perception of color is a highly individual and subjective experience. Corse is interested in the various ways the brain responds when incoming light frequencies react to different cells in the eye. For Corse, it is the interaction between the painting and the viewer that truly “activates” the work.