I’ve been reading “The Artist’s Mentor” by Ian Jackman lately and came across a famous passage where the innovative twentieth-century painter Jackson Pollock describes his work method:

My painting does not come from the easel.  I hardly ever stretch my canvas before painting.  I prefer to tack the unstretched canvas to the hard wall or the floor.  I need the resistance of a hard surface.  On the floor I am more at ease.  I feel nearer, more a part of the painting, since this way I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting.  This is akin to the method of the Indian Sand painters of the West.

I continue to get further away from the usual painter’s tools such as easel, palette, brushes, etc.  I prefer sticks, trowels, knives and dripping fluid paint or a heavy impasto with sand, broken glass and other foreign matter added.

When I am in my paintings, I am not aware of what I’m doing.  It is only after a sort of ‘get acquainted’ period that I see what I have been about.  I have no fears about making changes, destroying the image, ec., because the painting has a life o fits own.  I try to let it come through.  It is only when I lose contact with the painting that the result is a mess.  Otherwise there is pure harmony, an easy give and take, and the painting comes out well.

While it would surely be difficult to animate successfully from all four sides of the drawing board or the computer monitor, I like the idea of playing around with a scene in the beginning, just to see where it goes.  It’s like that cliched adage “Life is what happens when you’re making other plans”; I’ve thumbnailed many scenes only to watch as the scene itself takes over and sends me off in a completely new direction.