In Jackson Pollock’s biography by Deborah Solomon, a classmate said this of Jackson: he is “an immature person with fancy ideas but no discipline.” Pollock felt “frightened and bored” by people. “To Jackson, his father was more vivid as an absence than as a presence, leaving him with a fierce need to find someone or something he could believe in completely.”

“Jackson’s teacher, Schwankovsky, was a friend and follower of the noted Hindu philosopher, Jeddu Krishnamurti, who in 1928, founded a camp in the Ojai Valley. After hearing the ‘world teacher’ Pollock experienced an epiphany. It is not difficult to understand Pollock’s identification with Krishnamurti, a gentle, sensitive heretic, who according to his writings, had been unhappy in his youth and determined to find a goal, any goal, to which he could devote himself completely. His teachings confirmed a precept that Pollock believed: the moment you follow someone else, you cease to be your own leader.”