 Not all painting has to be neat, to look like something particular and be easy to understand. Sometimes you just have to let the energy and rhythm flow through your body and paint what you feel. Born in the Wild West of the United States over one-hundred years ago, Jackson Pollock was unlike any other artist. Not one for standing in front of an easel with a paintbrush and palette in hand, he dripped, splashed and poured paint across huge canvasses spread out on the floor. Moving with energy, rhythm and grace, the colours would fall exactly where he wanted. Jackson didn’t paint like other artists. He only knew one way to create art and he wasn’t sorry in the slightest… Accessible and interesting, Fausto Gilberti's series of ‘and Wasn’t Sorry’ biographies are a brilliant way to educate children about important artists. Jackson Pollock was an experimental abstract expressionist who broke free from the mould and painted in an unconventional manner that would challenge and divide the artistic world.
Clever and quirky, this homage to one of the world’s most important contemporary artists is a very befitting portrait of a one-of-a-kind creative. Just like the way Pollock painted, it is fun, energetic and with a generous smattering of splatters and drips. Narrated in the first person, simple texts tells the story of a wildly colourful artist who was in his element when gracefully gliding across a canvas with paint can in hand.
It is a celebration of individuality and a creative self who had the courage and audacity to step outside of the norms, create something innovative and leave a lasting legacy. Pollock’s radical representation of the artistic form would redefine what it meant to draw and to paint. There was certainly no colouring inside the lines here! Back-matter adds further interest with a page of biographical information and a photograph of a painting titled Number 1A which was created in 1948 on a huge canvas over two-and-a half metres in length and getting close to two metres wide. If you’re ever in New York then you can find it at the Museum of Modern Art. Fun illustrations and artistic licence will grab the attention of young readers, inspiring them to get creative, to be innovative and to experiment with their own unique ways and styles of painting. Recommended for 6+.
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