Auerbach’s mature style of painting, which he referred to as an ‘idiom’, is partly defined by richly textured surfaces. Like all of his work, Catherine Lampert Seated II was executed in a single round of painting after an extended period of sittings; the work of previous sittings was always scraped away before he began again at the next session. By completing his paintings in ‘one wet’, Auerbach was able to create dense layers and overlapping structures of brushwork. Each application of paint was made with a loaded brush, and each stroke extends through a remarkable length without loss of intensity or richness of colour. Each brush mark is singular and legible. As Auerbach explained to Richard Cork in 1983, he regarded painting as ‘drawing in slabs rather than edges, but it’s all drawing to me.’ Owing to his wet-on-wet technique, each slab of fresh paint quivered against existing marks and picked up other colours along its edges. The thickness and body of Auerbach’s oil medium is also remarkable, and this quality enabled him to overpaint while retaining the textures and colours of underlying brushwork. The result is a complex surface, at once superficial and densely layered.