Abstract Expressionism, a term used for non-figurative art, was born out of the Surrealist movement. With Freud as their source, Surrealist Artists began using methods such as random selection, chance occurrence, and stream of consciousness to extract cultural images from their own unconscious dreamtime. Moving from Freud to Jung, the Abstract Expressionist artists such as Pollock and Gorky immersed themselves in a process that revealed the elemental symbols of the universal dreamtime. Ibram Lassaw along with Pollock, de Kooning, and others, belonged to the New York Abstract Expressionist movement known as “Action” Painters. Lassaw differed from the others in that he mainly worked in sculpture, but was similar to them in his instinctive, intuitive approach to non-figurative form. From 1946-1949 Lassaw came closest to the other action painters by dripping, scratching, and brushing dyes onto two inch square glass plates which were projected into huge abstract paintings of light. Because they were considered experimental work and not suited for the gallery, these projections were rarely shown except to close friends. They were first officially exhibited at the Center for Contemporary Art at the University of Kentucky in 1992. In 2000, at Radford University in Virginia, 41 of the original slides were multi-projected into a space for the audience to interact with and walk through.

Norman McLaren, originally from Scotland, moved to New York in 1939 and worked with experimental filmmaker, Mary Ellen Bute. His stay in New York coincided with the formative years of the Abstract Expressionist Movement. During this time he started making hand drawn films. In 1941 he joined the National Film Board of Canada and in 1949 he created the film, "Begone Dull Care," using dyes and scratching techniques, he created color, texture, and pattern on 35mm film celluloid. The improvisational style of the film was mirrored by the music of Jazz pianist Oscar Peterson.

This presentation will discuss the Abstract Expressionist Aesthetic revealed in the “Projection Paintings” of Ibram Lassaw and the films of Norman McLaren . Abstract Expressionism, the exploration of the eternal archetypal experience may have been more closely revealed in these temporal forms of light into space than in the permanent art objects of painting and sculpture.

To view an example of Norman McLaren's hand painted film to the the Official Website of the National Film Board of Canada and search the title "Begone Dull Care". To veiw images of the Exhibition of Ibram Lassaw's Hand Painted Slide Projections at Radford University click below.