Charles Buckley's best known paintings explore the art of storytelling by illustrating the progression of a narrative. These linear stories depict progress by recording evidence of action, as in 1965 Coronet (2010), in which a car travels across three successive canvases, each panel a deeper shade than the former. The car is a common subject for Buckley, who has a tendency toward 1950s-era iconography, such as classic cars, housewives, airplanes, advertising symbols, and old-fashioned bathing suits and sporting attire. His work rotates between watercolor, pencil, and gouache on paper or acrylic on canvas, even including a series drawn overtop paint swatches. Buckley explores the construction of the narrative and the boundary between rational and uncertain thought, which he describes as "the area where things cannot be explained rationally, yet fit within the logic of the painting…"