He lived in wide-open spaces where he was exposed to Indian art and legend, becoming intimately acquainted with great natural wonders like the deserts, the Rocky Mountains and the Grand Canyon.

When Jackson was 10 his eldest brother (Charles) left home, found a job with a New York newspaper and studied at at the Art Students League with Thomas Hart Benton.

Jackson's first exposure to formal art classes was at Manual Art High School (Los Angeles).  He was rebellious.  The second expulsion (1929) was the end of his public education.

Working with his brothers on land-surveying jobs in Arizona and California, he was in contact with the open spaces, Indian legends, tortured geological features, and distinctive plant and animal life. He was also introduced to drinking and became an alcoholic.

Pollock's serious art studies began in 1930 at the Art Students League with Thomas Hart Benton. Benton's mural commissions gave Pollock a chance to see large-scale work in progress. This lasted about five years.

Work with Benton was important to Pollock as "something against which to react very strongly later on; it was better to have worked with him than with a less resistant personality who would have provided much less strong opposition."

"He drove his kind of realism at me so hard I bounced right into nonobjective painting."

Pollock moved in with his brother Sanford (Greenwich village), existing on relief programs of the New Deal. He was employed as a highway construction worker, a stone cutter and a janitor.

From 1935 to 1943 he worked on and off for the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration where he was required to produce one painting every eight weeks for government offices or public buildings. (He produced about 50; almost all have mysteriously disappeared.)

The hours were not demanding, so he took part in a mural workshop in New York led by Mexican artist David Siqueiros. Siqueiros worked in large scale; he experimented with air guns, drip and splatter techniques, synthetic paints and commercial lacquers with brilliant color and high gloss. (He also made banners for Communist demonstrations. Pollock flirted with Communism but soon lost interest.)

In 1937 Pollock began psychiatric treatment for alcoholism. His analyst used the artist's drawings and sketches to reach unconscious anxieties and placed emphasis on the importance of myths, symbols and legends on unconscious working of the human mind.  Exposed to Surrealism through Robert Motherwell, Pollock was especially attracted to automatism (allowing hand to wander freely across surface of canvas or paper, directed by inner impulses as much as possible).

In 1943 he was painting designs for neckties. He then met Peggy Guggenheim who gave him a contract for $150/month in return for his total artistic output.  Two years later the support was raised to $300/month.  She also lent him the money for a down-payment on a house.

Pollock married Lee Krasner (who had studied with Hans Hofmann). She was a steady source of encouragement and support. He fluctuated between supreme confidence and profound uncertainty about his work.

"Is this a painting? Not. 'Is this a good painting?' But is it a painting?"

When he was appraoched about creating a mural for Peggy Guggenheim, Marcel Duchamp suggested painting it on canvas.

The chance to work in large scale was a decisive turn in his career. He ripped out a wall in his studio and then sat uninspired for days, getting more depressed as time passed.  Then he painted the entire work (8'x20') in one session. After this he continued to paint larger and larger.

A main force of this era was Picasso.  Pollock's wife heard a crash in the next room.  Pollock had thrown a book of Picasso works; "That guy missed nothing!"

The canvas became an arena in which to act rather than a space to reproduce, redesign, analyze or "express" an object (real or imagined). What happened on a canvas not a picture but an event.

Pollock no longer approached a canvas with an image in mind.  He went up with material in hand; the image was the result of the encounter. He wanted to express feelings instead of paint an "illustration."

TIME magazine referred to him as "Madman" and "Jack the Dripper."

By end of 1946-47 Pollock had gotten rid of subject matter entirely and painting feelings directly on canvas.

He did not like using a brush; it "inhibited" him. Pollock wanted direct contact with the unconscious mind; during the time it takes to mix the paint, load the brush and paint a stroke, the unconscious mind had been "censored."

Pollock had seen Navajo sandpainters dribble sand through their fingures to create their designs.  He started using a similar technique to apply his paint.

To Pollock, the most important event of painting was the act of creation. He worked steadily day and night, sometimes for months, sleeping and eating only because he had to recharge; then he wouldn't paint for long periods.

According to a critic, his work had an "air of baked macaroni."

Pollock was frustrated and neglected by the art establishment.  Many of his paintings were sold by Peggy Guggenheim, but none for more than $1,000. (Twenty years later buyers paid $150,000 for minor works.)

By the early 1950s Pollock had retreated to a kind of figurative abstraction involving symbols and myths. His drinking problem became severe.