Tanabe’s graphite works are rendered with dense tonalities and careful tension between light and dark. Many of his graphite works depict Canadian prairie scenes. Works from the latter part of the 1970s and early 1980s tend to be read as ‘interior landscapes’, mirroring a time of personal upheaval and resettlement. Tanabe’s emphasis on the horizon line conveys a spatial negotiation between the vastness of prairie and ocean, the juxtaposition between one thing and another. The horizon line is a metaphorically-charged point of constancy and distance. Just as Tanabe’s ‘white paintings’ of the 1950s had explored the division of land and sky, his black works of the 1970s seem to explore the nature of spatial experience.