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It was an artwork by the artist Matt Harle.

Around the same time, I got an e-mail from my mother asking if I could make some kind of artwork to go on a flyer for a group she is in. I asked what she was looking for and she said it could be anything, maybe something abstract. The next time I visited with her for dinner, I showed her a picture of Matt's painting installation and asked what about something like this, would that work, and she  said she loved it. I made an abstract picture expanding on the monochrome cell in Matt's work:

..not really thinking of anything in mind, but it had sort of a familiar feeling, although I couldn't put my finger on it exactly.. where I'd seen something like this before.

Some time the next month, I was walking around at night in a parking lot and noticed a huge pattern of wide back lines on the ground that looked strikingly simliar to the thing I had made. It dawned on me that's exactly it - it's these abstract looking asphalt marks that are everywhere. I'm convinced this is what I was trying to emulate, and why I was drawn to that original cell in Matt's work  in the first place.