The artwork titled “Lavender Mist Number 1, 1950” was created by artist Jackson Pollock in the year 1950. Employing oil and enamel on canvas, Pollock gave life to a vast abstract composition measuring 221 by 299.7 cm. This masterpiece of action painting is part of the collection at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. It exemplifies the spontaneous and dynamic techniques of the artist, which contributed greatly to the progressive abstract expressionist movement.
In its elaborate chaos, the artwork reveals an intricate array of colors splattered and dripped across the canvas. This intricate web of paint evidences Pollock’s unique style of pouring, flinging, and gesturally manipulating paint, abandoning traditional brushes in favor of sticks, knives, and other implements. The result is a dense and immersive visual field that withdraws from representational art, instead opting to engage viewers on an emotional and visceral level. Pollock’s method involved laying the canvas on the ground which allowed him an unencumbered range of movement, facilitating a tangible physicality to each stroke and splotch of pigment on the canvas, a defining characteristic of his action paintings.
