[Sobel] was noted by acclaimed gallerist Sidney Janis for her self invented method for applying paint, the very same method of drip painting that went on to influence some of the most famous names of the abstract expressionist movement. […] In 1947, Sobel faded from the spotlight, and the following year, after discovering an allergy to paint, she turned to crayon and pencil. It took until the late 1960s for her name to resurface, with MoMA’s acquisition of Milky Way, but she died soon after, in 1968.

A really good picture looks as if it’s happened at once. It’s an immediate image. For my own work, when a picture looks labored and overworked, and you can read in it—well, she did this and then she did that, and then she did that—there is something in it that has not got to do with beautiful art to me. And I usually throw these out, though I think very often it takes ten of those over-labored efforts to produce one really beautiful wrist motion that is synchronized with your head and heart, and you have it, and therefore it looks as if it were born in a minute.