In Ocean Park #48, Richard Diebenkorn reflects his interest in the never-ending manipulation of land by building up and erasing materials on the painting's surface. The grid-like planes manifest flatness and depth at the same time, unifying nature and the built environment, and suggesting an abstracted landscape seen from above. Diebenkorn’s images of the Ocean Park hillside of the Santa Monica, California neighborhood where he lived and worked are not just about the terrain. They are as much about the light and how to capture the quality of it in his paintings. Through a luminous treatment of the color and light he admired from his studio window, Diebenkorn softened the grid structure underpinning his paintings.