This exposure to Surrealism inspired Sage to begin painting in earnest. She exhibited six of her new oils in the Salon des Surindépendants show at the Porte de Versailles in the fall of 1938. These semiabstract paintings, including "Afterwards" and "The World Is Blue," borrowed motifs and styles from de Chirico and the Surrealists but showed hints of Sage's own future work as well. Art historian Whitney Chadwick states that Sage's paintings were "imbued with an aura of purified form and a sense of motionlessness and impending doom found nowhere else in Surrealism." Around this time the artist began signing her works "Kay Sage."