Veins of Porcelain: The Erosion of Thunder

Veins of Porcelain: The Erosion of Thunder reinterprets Jackson Pollock’s  Number 18 as a collision between permanence and chaos, mass and movement, erosion and expression. Here, Pollock’s iconic tapestry of tangled splatters is layered over a monumental, crumbling bust—a sculpture caught mid-dissolution, as if carved from the raw noise of memory itself. The body is stone, but the mind is electric. What was once static begins to tremble. 

The foundation of the piece is a broken sculpture, evocative of classical antiquity—muscular, godlike, yet fracturing under the weight of its own breath. The figure’s surface is worn and smooth in some places, jagged and ruptured in others. Its head leans forward, chin pressed into a contemplative hand, as if caught in eternal self-reflection. But unlike a figure frozen in marble, this one pulses with unrest. Pollock’s paint does not decorate it—it consumes it. 

Pollock’s original  Number 18 erupts across the form like veins of stormlight, a chaotic map laid bare across bone and spirit. His blacks tangle like roots and shattered circuits—marking the sculpture like psychic fissures, splitting it open. Red spatters become wounds or warnings, hints of blood memory or protest. Ochres and browns trail across the chest like dried mud, sediment from an emotional flood. Here, Pollock’s typically abstract language finds flesh to inhabit—it moves not around the form but into it, staining and stitching it back together. 

The color palette transitions between the ancient and the apocalyptic. The stone bust bears hues of dusty beige, weathered grey, and muted amber. Light falls from an undefined space above, giving the impression of divine interrogation. Over this, Pollock’s signature lines slash and curl—vivid in places, ghostlike in others. His use of yellow is gentle, almost sunlight against ash, while vibrant reds appear suddenly—like the voice that cannot be silenced. Tiny flecks of blue-gray glimmer like fragments of memory, flickering through the dust. 

The upper portion of the composition grows more ephemeral. The stone face begins to blur into smoke, into vaporous abstraction. Its features lose definition—eyelids melt into sky, the crown of the head becomes mist, the hair becomes light. The transition is seamless yet violent. It speaks of transformation, but also of loss—the mind disintegrating, ascending, or surrendering. Pollock’s lines become lighter here, more airborne. Instead of splatter, they hover. Instead of impact, they drift. 

As an artist, my thought when shaping this reinterpretation was to investigate the conversation between permanence and impermanence—between what we build to last and what slips away. Pollock’s  Number 18 has always felt to me like an echo of violence barely held together by grace. In this visual, I imagined what happens when that echo touches stone. When the chaos we suppress is no longer held at bay. When the sculpture—an icon of stability—becomes haunted by everything it tried to forget. 

The bust represents history, identity, ego—the hard surface we present to the world. But Pollock’s paint maps what lies underneath: impulse, trauma, creativity, ruin. And in this union, a new truth is revealed. The form is not being destroyed—it is becoming real. What looks like collapse is in fact exposure. What appears like ruin is revelation. 

There is a moment, in the lower half of the piece, where the sculpture’s hand tightens—not dramatically, but with intent. As if to remind us: we hold our chaos. We carry it. And sometimes, we let it reshape us. Pollock’s abstract rage becomes our inner monologue, etched in every groove. His linework is no longer decoration. It is scripture carved into stone. 

Veins of Porcelain: The Erosion of Thunder is not a portrait. It is a surrender. A depiction of how the self unravels when truth, time, and tenderness collide. It asks: What survives when identity cracks? What beauty is born in the breaking?