Considered one of the most significant Californian postwar artists, McLaughlin painted a focused body of geometric works that are completely devoid of any connection to everyday experience and objects, inspired by the Japanese notion of the void.

He aimed to create paintings devoid of any object hood including but not limited to a gestures, representations and figuration.

Leveraging a technique of layering rectangular bars on adjacent planes, McLaughlin creates works that provoke introspection and, consequently, a greater understanding of one's relationship to nature.

When they returned to Boston in 1938, they opened The Tokaido, Inc., an art gallery which specialized in Japanese prints and other Asian items.

After studying Japanese at the University of Hawaiʻi in Honolulu, he served the United States Marine Corps in World War II as a translator.

I have found comfort in some aspects of thought expressed by Malevitch, and I am indebted to Mondrian because his painting strongly indicated that the natural extension of Neo-Plasticism is the totally abstract.

I want to communicate only to the extent that the painting will serve to induce or intensify the viewer's natural desire for contemplation without benefit of a guiding principle.

Essentially color serves him as a means of defining and regulating a form's relative importance in the composition.

"[4] A touring exhibition "Birth of the Cool: California Art, Design and Culture at Midcentury" featured the abstract classicists.

They are composed of smooth, flat rectangles of black, white, off-white and gray with blocks of color strategically inserted here and there.

In 1968, the Corcoran Gallery of Art exhibited McLaughlin's second major museum retrospective curated by James Harithas.