Interested in points of color and light as material substance, Howardena Pindell began working with dot patterning in 1968 to explore illusionary space. Creating templates with a hole puncher and paper, Pindell sprayed color through the holes to form her dot imagery. By 1973, Pindell had begun recycling these punchings in numerous nonchromatic mixed media works, of which untitled #6 is an example.
Pindell began by numbering her collection of punchings sequentially, but eventually switched to a more random approach. While her use of graph paper suggests an under-lying structure, the random numbering subverts a formal arrangement. Ultimately, Pindell is most interested in the accidental formation of dark and light shapes that results from the varying amount of ink she used to draw the numbers.