One can see this in Untitled through the loose, gestural daubs of sunny yellow, outlined around their edges by warm oranges and reds and remnants of those deep blacks, as well as hints of the rich blues that would come to define the latter portion of his output. For Francis, color was of the utmost importance in painting, the singular element that shone above all else. "Color is the real substance for me, the real underlying thing which drawing and line are not," he has said. (S. Francis, quoted in  Sam Francis: The Shadow of Colors, exh. cat., Kunstverein Ludwigsburg, 1995, p. 8). 

The vastness of the negative space intensifies the color and evokes the concept of the void, an idea that much intrigued Francis after an important trip to Japan he took the year prior. While in Tokyo, Francis took on work in a temple, where he was introduced to this idea and to haboku, or flung-ink painting. The influence of haboku is seen in Untitled, chiefly in the way drips of paint trickle down from the forms at the upper register into the expanses of untouched paper. This immense plane of white serves a multifaceted purpose as both a suggestion of the void and a color that unites the composition. Francis considered white as important a color as any other and a symbolic blending of East and West. As Peter Seltz has noted, "he reflects on the symbolism of white as the imperial color of magnificence and nobility, as the color of Great Jove, the albatross, and the veil of Christianity's deity, but he also notes that it is the color of evil, transcendent horror, and great panic, the shroud of death and the fog of ghosts." (P. Seltz,  Sam Francis, New York, 1982, p. 62). Similarly, art historian Kiki Kogelnik has observed that Francis harbored a distinctly American love of open spaces. In this way, the white acts as a fusion of his American sensibilities with Eastern thought. 

As a result of his many travels, Francis spent a great deal of time looking at landscapes from an aerial perspective. Indeed, the composition of  Untitled  feels like the viewer is looking down onto an expanse of land as if airborne. This feeling adds an even further layer of meaning, acting as a twofold understanding of space in its combination of the void and aerial perspective. It is also a personal reference to his time training as a fighter pilot in World War II. Untitled is, therefore, at once an evocation of the personal, a glimmering study of color, and a merging of many cultural influences.