If You Like Jackson Pollock, You'll Love Lee Krasner

Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) was a practitioner of action paintings and abstract expressionism. Throughout his working years, Pollock produced a kind of meditative art, paired with a macho persona.

He worked in the desert wearing jeans and boots and never without a cigarette, sublimating his emotion into frenetic painting sessions. A maker, a thinker, a man - the quintessential American artist of the twentieth century.

His infamous 'drip paintings' record his physical feats of movement on the flat canvas by the splattered streaks of paint that he dripped and flung. These huge paintings, metres in length, were regarded as the expression of freedom and instinct.

Yet the focus on Pollock has overshadowed the work his collaborator, and wife, Lee Krasner. From her teens she dedicated herself to art, studying at a number of schools and institutes that specialised in the subject.

Compare it to Pollock's Painting A (1950). This was made at the height of his fame, a year after Life magazine printed a four page article asking 'Is he the greatest living painter in the United States?'

This painting has a much freer structure. The paint covers almost all the canvas, but leaves some blank patches to the right.

The size and shape and softness of brushstrokes all differ. In fact, it's more splattery, more drippy.

There's less control over the paint, but there's also a narrower range of colours; red, black, ochre, and a small amount of grey-blue. Darker, moodier colours that he would begin to use during his 'black period'.