General Overview of Jackson Pollock

Paul Jackson Pollock was born on January 28, 1912 in Cody, Wyoming. A year after Jackson was born, his family moved to Arizona and moved about California. Jackson was the youngest of five children, and his parents were LeRoy McCoy Pollock and Stella McClure Pollock. Pollock attended Manual Arts High School in Los Angeles, where he was encouraged to pursue his interest in art. Two brothers of Pollock were also studying art at this time and Pollock was asked to join one of them in New York to study with Thomas Hart Benton. After studying with his brother and Benton, Pollock went east and enrolled in Benton's class at the League.
While in Benton's class, Pollock analyzed Old Master paintings and learned all about drawing and composition. He studied many mural paintings and also posed for artists who were at the time painting murals. Pollock soon started doing some of his own work, which reflected the art of many famous artists, such as Picasso, Miro, and many other surrealist painters. He soon became interested in a style of painting, where he would fling and pour the liquid onto the canvas. Soon after that he started working for WPA Federal Art Program. He worked there for eight years and after that he moved to Springs, Long Island in New York. He lived there for the rest of his life with his wife and focused on his art. He went through many hard times in his life and was an alcoholic through a majority of his life. After many years of stuggle and many years of great works, Pollock tragically died in a car accident on the morning of August 12, 1956. Pollock had been drunk and killed a passenger and seriously injured another. Pollock has been known as a very influential abstract painter of his time, and will be remembered forever.


Hannah Thees
http://naples.cc.sunysb.edu/cas/pkhouse.nsf/pages/pollock
http://www.nga.gov/feature/pollock/artist4.shtm