White Light by Jackson Pollock

White Light has a real place in history as it is the last complete painting created by the North American painter Jackson Pollock. Pollock completed White Light in 1954 soon before his death.

He did start several other paintings this year, and some of them were begun after White Light. However, White Light remains the last complete art work by Jackson Pollock.

In this painting, white streaks score and cut across a frantic blend of colours in the background - mimicking the effect of moving white light.

White Light is usually described as a painting, however some art critics have suggested that it should be described as more of a sculpture. This is because of the way in which Pollock painted it.

He took tubes of oil paint, aluminium paint and enamel and squeezed them straight onto the canvas, using the tube to sculpt the paint into stiffening shapes.

This is the conclusion of a trend in Pollock's work where, as his career progressed, he stopped using traditional paint brushes and started squirting the paint straight onto the canvas, almost relying on chance to see where the paint fell.

Pollock is known for creating a new genre in art, known as Abstract Expressionism. As its name suggests, this genre is a blending of abstract and expressionist art.

This blend can clearly be seen in White Light. What we have with this painting is clearly an expressionist depiction of dazzling white light.

At the same time, it is also a very abstract painting, dwelling on the beauty of abstract form alone without necessarily endowing those forms with definite or realistic meanings.