I remember as a child being introduced to the work of Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) and likening the randomly appearing drizzles to the drop cloth of a frenetic house painter.

What I didn't know or appreciate at such a tender age is that Pollock was a pioneer of abstract expressionism made famous by the likes of Pollock peers and contemporaries such as William de Kooning and Mark Rothko.

It was an intellectual movement likely spurred on by Pollock's wife, Lee Krasner (who was an abstract painter of considerable distinction herself), and was also seasoned by the painter's boyhood exposure to Native American art growing up in Arizona and travelling throughout the Southwest.

Avoiding any perceivable point of emphasis, Pollock's drip technique" (he would poke holes in the bottoms of tin cans to distribute his pigment) and paint pouring techniques evolved into a signature style. Using household and industrial paints instead of artists' oils, it is little wonder that I and others would compare his work to spilled residue on the protected floors of some remodeled room.

Some called Pollock's style "action painting." It gave rise to an entire philosophy of paint application, in which a given artist would strive toward spontaneity and randomness rather than calculated construction of a tangible image. Pollock named his paintings by number, rather than assigning any formal description or title to them.

Pollock ultimately attracted the patronage of mega heiress-turned-Bohemian Peggy Gugenheim, and skyrocketed to fame following a 1949 Life magazine feature which posed the question: "Is he the greatest living painter in the United States?"

Popular response to the article was highly critical. One person complained that Pollock's paintings were like "a mop of tangled hair I have an irresistible urge to comb out."  

Attempting to translate his avant-garde approach to art to the layman, Time magazine nicknamed Pollock "Jack the Dripper" in a 1956 article and allowed Pollock himself to make startling contrasts between traditional methods of painting and the pioneering approach of an abstract expressionist.

"My painting does not come from the easel," he explained. "I prefer to tack the un-stretched canvas to the hard wall or the floor... On the floor I am more at ease. I feel nearer, more part of the painting. I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting."

As random as his creations may have seemed to the eyes of a child, Pollock claimed that he approached his paintings with a general idea of how he wanted them to appear. Ultimately his canvases expressed a tension between the controllable and the uncontrollable, creatively contrasting the realms between order and chaos.

It might be said that Pollock's life imitated his art. He was an alcoholic whose personal pendulum swung deeply into the dark realms of chaos. His premature death in an automobile crash certainly lends credence to that perspective. It also elevated his fame to that of a rock star, whose meteoric rise inevitably lead to a dramatic burnout.

Hollywood found Pollock's story dramatic enough to create a feature length film. Ed Harris directed and played the main role in "Pollock" (released in 2000) after Harris' father noted that his son bore a strong likeness to the painter. Marcia Gay-Harden (a La Jolla native) played Pollock's wife, Krasner, who died in 1984. 

A year later the Pollock-Krasner Foundation was established to provide financial assistance to visual artists around the world. Since then, the Foundation has awarded more than 3,000 grants totaling over $49 million. 

The Pollock-Krasner House and Studio in East Hampton, New York was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1994 and is currently administered by State University of New york at Stony Brook. Tours of the studio and house are available during the summer months.