In addition to urban structures such as modernist buildings and subways, Halley drew influence from the pop themes and social issues associated with New Wave music. He took the modernist grid of previous abstract painting—namely, according to Brandt, the work of Frank Stella—and amplified its colors and impact in accordance with the postmodern times. During this early period, Halley employed new colors and materials with specific connotations. He began to use fluorescent Day-Glo paint, which has an uncanny glow that recalls the artificial lights of postmodern society and the bright government-issued signs that mark streets and workers' clothing. Halley also uses Day-Glo colors in response to developments in modernist painting—a "hyperrealization" of art-historical motifs, in Halley terms (following Jean Baudrillard)—and as a means of delineating space on his canvases.