My work is usually determined or influenced by what is happening or how I am feeling in my everyday life. So, although I have been occasionally inspired by a number of people who work in the art field including designers, musicians, actors, models, athletes and directors, there aren’t any fine artists in particular who influenced me in terms of technique.
However, if I were to pick one artist who has most influenced my work artistically, especially with the style of my work, it would be Jackson Pollock.
Looking Back on My Life of Living and Working in New York
The style of my paintings evolved rapidly while I was living in New York, just as though it was keeping up with the fast-pace of New York City.
It was also at this time that I learned about some of the acclaimed American abstract expressionists, such as Willem de Kooning, Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock.
I had a very good friend and also a work partner, who was a sculptor when I was living in New York City. I remember him often mentioning Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner to me. Once he showed me a book that featured their work.
He even found an apartment in the Springs for me, which was in the same neighbourhood as the house the two artists had lived in.
At that time, I was working on two large horizontal canvases with panorama views from the rooftop of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. After I had worked on them in two different workspaces in East Hampton, I completed these two paintings in my apartment in the Springs. And I felt it turned out to be a little similar in style to the earlier work of Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner. This was because of the work I had seen in their books. Perhaps, I was also influenced by them spiritually.
Two Artists I Feel I Most Identified With
Although often my work gets temporarily influenced by what I see when I am working on a painting, that doesn’t influence my future work.
But, I think that the influence I got from the paintings of Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner remained within my work thereafter. It was their interpretation of self-expression and freedom that resonated with my own so that once I discovered how to demonstrate it, I kept going back to their way of expression, just like going back to my home town, something I felt was comfortable and familiar.
Although I have personally felt close to Vincent Van Gogh’s way of thinking, Jackson Pollock is another artist with who I have identified. The most apparent similarity between the two artists is their temperament. They both had outrageous emotions constantly bursting from inside themselves. They were also very sensitive and vulnerable.
Personality may be a factor in how artists feel and it may determine what they are most comfortable creating.