[2] In 1950, at the height of McCarthyism, she rejected an oath of loyalty imposed by the University of California, Berkeley’s board of regents and left her faculty position for New York, where she would have a solo exhibition at the former Algonquin Hotel.
In 1951, she went to both Mexico and Guatemala and saw the arts of the Toltecs, Zapotecs, Aztecs, and Mayan cultures and also returned to Cowichan Bay.
[4] From these influences came her interest in form “as a symbol and a plastic constituent”[3] and after 1949, as Colin Graham has said, her “main formal development after that date lay in her use of space, which became increasingly shallow.
"[5] On the topic of abstract art, she has said, “It is the act of man’s continual communion with the universe transformed as by magic into substance.
"[5] From this interest, she was also greatly influenced by the art and practices of many Indigenous groups, who she saw as giving form to universal forces.