ACTION PAINTING

Happy New Year!

I hope everyone had a fun and safe start to 2011. I'm so excited for this year--I have a sneaking suspicion its going to be a great one!

To start off the new year, I wanted to wear something festive that wasn't traditional NYE glitter and sequins. I ended up going with a Jackson Pollock-inspired look--what could be more spirited than action painting?

I had Pollock in mind when I bought this dress. Set against the backdrop of the barren trees, I though the setting evoked the beautifully haphazard layering of the paintings.

The beauty of Pollock's action paintings comes from the many layers of dripped paint and the open composition. The way the paint was applied to the canvas has a rhythmic quality that could not be achieved by easel painting.

Pollock's method of flinging paint onto a horizontal canvas changed painting forever (and signified the highest level of art to critics like Clement Greenberg).

Argued to be the earliest action painter, Pollock's notorious hard living cut his career short, but not before he created some of the most well-known and recognizable artworks of the 20th century.

I've been inspired by the Abstract Expressionists a lot recently, possibly due to the current blockbuster AbEx New York exhibition at the MoMA.

AbEx not only inspired my New Year's Eve outfit, but also my New Year's Resolution: to let go and live my life like a giant action painting--making what could seem like accidental drips or unplanned instances into a multilayered masterpiece.

I'm wearing an H&M dress, DKNY leather motorcycle jacket, Madewell necklace, Dannijo ring, and Christian Siriano x Payless "talon" shoes.

[Pollock images from felixbowker.wordpress.com, blog.cleveland.com, abstract-art.com, and blog.case.edu, respectively.]