Sea Change

Jackson Pollock

1947

Artist and commercial oil paint, with gravel, on canvas

Seattle Art Museum

Sea Change was painted at a transitional moment in Pollock’s career. In 1947, the dripping technique he occasionally exploited as a compositional element became his dominant method. Pollock had begun this work in 1946 as an easel painting executed with a brush, using vivid blues and pinks. In 1947, he laid the unfinished painting on his studio floor, transforming it with scattered gravel, dripped aluminum and glossy black house paint. If we typically think of Pollock’s technique as a violent, instant manifestation of “expression,” Sea Change makes us reconsider. Recent analysis and conservation reveals that he carefully preserved pa