Beginning in the late 1960s, Takao Tanabe expanded his practice beyond the conventional boundaries of painting through a series of banners designed for public spaces. These works grew out of a period of experimentation in which artists sought to extend painting into the architectural environment. Public commissions, including projects for Winnipeg’s Centennial Concert Hall (1967), the University of Alberta and the University of Regina (both 1973), and the Canadian Embassy in Mexico City (1980), brought Tanabe’s banners into a range of civic and institutional settings. Earlier work for the City of Vancouver, dating to 1963, also reflects his engagement with public art and design. Some banners were painted on canvas; others, fabricated from dyed nylon in collaboration with a commercial flag maker in Montreal, allowed light to pass through their surfaces, transforming colour and pattern as viewing conditions changed. Tanabe used graduated colour and irregular angles to move beyond the shallow space of his earlier geometric abstraction. Suspended in space, the banners shift between painting, sculpture, and architectural element. Their attention to light, perception, and the viewer’s experience invites comparison with the Light and Space movement emerging in Southern California during the 1960s and 1970s, though Tanabe approached these concerns through his own sustained investigation of colour and geometric form. Both monumental and responsive to their surroundings, the banners extend abstraction into the environment, making light an integral part of the work.