From My Cyberjournal 75July 2006 copyright/all rights reserved/Alfredo Roces
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In that high noon of my youth, back in the '50's, the New York school of Abstract Expressionists turned art on its head. Suddenly figurative art was seen as passe, and abstract art became the hottest International trend. Jackson Pollock appeared in Life magazine's August 1949 issue under a large heading: "Is he the greatest living painter in the United States?" Wow! All that hype!

Raised in Amorsolo and Degas, I was bemused but curious. Action painting got my attention because in it, the creative process, the act of painting, became the subject matter of art. The drips and blobs of paint, the hesitations and the mind-changing — what the Italians refer to as "pentimento"—were preserved on the canvas as the life spirit of the work. Spontaneity. The passing moment. The gesture. Zen.

Nature of course is the master action painter. On Fraser Island I caught glimpses of abstract expressionist works on the beach done by Nature rather than "Jack the dripper" Pollock. They are just as exciting and just as experimental as that old New York school. Abstract expression exited as quickly as it came into the art scene. But it forever colored my art outlook and the way I see life around me, like these images in an insignificant creek of colored sands on Fraser island.