Jackson Pollock
"It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as it is well painted. This is the essence of academic painting. However, there is no such thing as good painting about nothing."
Abstract Expressionism" was never an ideal label for the movement, which developed in New York in the 1940s and 1950s. It was somehow meant to encompass not only the work of painters who filled their canvases with fields of color and abstract forms, but also those who attacked their canvases with a vigorous gestural expressionism.
Jackson Pollock was the founder of the innovative painting technique, known as Action Painting. This method of making abstract art involved dripping and smearing the paint onto the canvas in dramatic sweeping gestures.
He would pour and fling the paint, using sticks and knives, onto an unstretched canvas which had been tacked to a hard wall or floor. This enabled him to walk around the painting and become part of the painting process.
The She-Wolf
The She-Wolf is a painting which Jackson Pollock painted in the year 1943. This artist is popular for his Abstract Expressionism style, and this painting is not considered to be a clear example of this style. In fact here he seems to have focused on a mythological theme. Many consider this work of art as a form of Surrealism.
This painting is one of the best examples of Jackson Pollock’s love for free-form abstraction. This is due to the fact that one needs to look closely at the painting so as to see what the main characters are, since there are several spatters and multi-colored elements. The wolf seems to be advancing forward. It is painted with heavy black lines, and abstract patches. The palette he used was rather somber.
I love this painting because it makes you see art in a different way.
In the Pollock painting I find interesting the layering of lines and colours which oscillate between being just lines and forming an image of things (some form of animal). I enjoy the play between the painting as a surface of thick aggressively applied paint and the illusion of space and volumes (depicted things).
The dark nature of this piece of art is clearly visible. Pollock demonstrated the mythological elements in this piece, making She Wolf one of the more dramatic pieces in his repertoire and also his first artwork to enter a museum collection.
