After a few years painting abstractions in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Bearden turned to photomontage and collage, establishing his reputation as a leading contemporary artist. For his innovative collages, Bearden cut up photographs, magazines, newspapers, and prints, pasting and painting the pieces and shapes into powerful portraits of Black life. Carolina Interior is a remembrance of the bathing ritual he witnessed on visits to the humble homes of his relatives. Bearden fractured and layered his images, improvising with materials and ideas in a way that was more than a matter of technique. It came out of his life and culture-- the improvisational nature of the jazz music he loved, the Christian iconography he saw in Black churches, patchwork quilts, and rooms wallpapered with old newspapers and magazine pages he recalled from childhood summers in North Carolina.