[3] During this period Ball met and was influenced by many of "The Irascible 18", including Mark Rothko, Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning.
[4] Ball returned to Australia in 1965 helping to bring abstract techniques to the attention of Australian artists.
His contemporaries such as John Olsen, Erica McGilghrist and Leonard Hessing and the older Sam Atyeo were equally abstract but influenced by Dutch post-war avant garde and earlier Russian abstract painting, whereas Ball was one of the first Australian artists of his generation, similar to Yvonne Audette and John Vickery to take an interest in American art over European art.
[3] Black Reveal, a work from the series, is in the collection of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, examining the negative space of colour.
[9] In 1968 Ball's work was included in the influential exhibition The Field[10] at the National Gallery of Victoria, demonstrating the arrival of hard edged abstraction in Australian art.