In his New York paintings, Long continued to use the same materials - oil, alkyd and collage. But thematically he began to map paths that he saw in the forest of art of the past century. In selectively examining his own artistic history and movements of twentieth century Modernism, Long seemed to be asking if some modernist discoveries could seed new ideas into the coming century.

To encapsulate his immersion in this new direction, Long named many of his New York paintings after towns names in New Jersey, which sat just west of his Tribeca studio. His output included Navesink, Bivalve, Ramapo and Ringoes.

The arched windows of the early nineteenth century brick warehouse in which Long worked framed a Hopperesque scene of stark decrepit buildings cut with harsh diagonals of sun and shadow. Compositional affinities began to appear in the paintings.

In many of Long's earlier works, he implicitly depicted landscapes in their compromised and degraded conditions. However, in his New York oeuvre, he celebrated the principles of place. For example, the delicate balance of the staccato rhythms in BamBam suggest a nature-based Broadway Boogie-Woogie.

BamBam is emblematic of Long's New York years when his work incorporated disparate - and often clashing - elements such as urban and rural, loud and quiet and calm and highly energiized. Similiar pulses can be found in the ochre, black, white, red and gold compositions of other works in the series including Bivalve and Navesink. Improvisation is a constant in Long's process as he varies this rhythm pattern again and again, as in such recent works as Atoll and Archipelago.

In 2001, Long returned to San Francisco, where his work took another turn. In his new paintings he gesturally scattered rope shaped elements across an underlying geometrical framework. In such works as Middle Passage and King Phillip's War biology seems to emerge from mathematics. They join forces to produce an opaque narrative that portrays mental maps of historical events.

The following year, Long broke down his paintings into rectangular modules. Each work featured a large panel appended to a frieze of intuitively arranged smaller panels, which were painted independently. Squeegied batters of paint butted up against different components including oxidized metal and panels of smooth solid color to convey an extreemly sensual effect.