Truitt began the white paintings in 1973, calling the
series Arundel after the county in Maryland, near where she grew
up. Writing in Daybook: The Journal of an Artist, Truitt
described her complex intentions and the deep emotional life she felt were
represented in these seemingly simple works:

“In these paintings I set forth, to see for myself how they
appear, what might be called the tips of my conceptual icebergs in that I put
down so little of all that they refer to. I try in them to show forth the
forces I feel to be a reality behind, and more interesting than, phenomena. I
keep trying to catch the laws I can feel illustrated in phenomena: in meetings
and just-not-meetings; in forces abutting, thrusting one against another,
illuminating one another. A force is only visible in its effect, and it is the
split second in which this effect becomes just barely visible that haunts me.”