This work forms part of Maurice Cockrill’s vast and ambitious Divided series, composed of eighty-four paintings in a variety of scales. Layered, matrix like forms are split into a two-part composition: occupying each side of the canvas. Deep, midnight blue forms a backdrop to different variations of the colour; powder blue enmeshes with webs of a contrasting ochre. For Cockrill, the series was rooted in a theoretical inquiry into the nature of opposition and difference itself. Parts of this large series were exhibited concurrently around Europe in 2000, the year in which they were made: in Paris at the Galerie Vidal-Saint Phalle, at the Galerie Bugdahn und Kaimer in Dusseldorf and at The Royal Academy in London.