I can't decide if Jackson Pollock is totally overrated or actually a bit underrated. He is a house-hold name, even kids know who Jackson Pollock is. But the name Jackson Pollock, I think, it is often written off as: Oh yeah the splatter painting. Insert eye roll.

But to see a Pollock painting, to stand in front of one, is to witness a rainbow of a composition. One that strikes through the soul in an instant storm of lightning.

Pollock is famous for not painting on the canvas but by dripping paint on the work. Yet his paintings weren't just random splotches of paint thrown here and there, as seems to be thought in passing conversation. Looking at the compositions they are incredibly complex, balanced and exactly how he got the paint on canvas can still incite wonder.

Today on our walk through art history, you will be swiftly met by action painting. This is the style of painting that so many of us often think of when we hear the words: abstract art. The image of a slap of paint unconsciously thrown across a canvas comes to mind. Think Jackson Pollock, Willem De Kooning and Franz Kline.

It was during the 40's and 50's that this style of art first came into it's own. It was the jazzy, hip New York School of painters that first started owning action painting and working exclusively in this aesthetic. The process of putting the paint on canvas could have been seen as performance art itself, and this unconscious action was really what the heart of the movement was all about. The artists smeared, dribbled, threw and splashed paint onto their canvases, Pollock famously hid things like cigarette butts in his.