Jean-Paul Riopelle to abstract expressionism), in which he used myriad tumultuous cubes and triangles of multicolored elements, facetted with a palette knife, spatula, or trowel, on often large canvases to create powerful atmospheres. The presence of long filaments of paint in his painting from 1948 through the early 1950s has often been seen as resulting from a dripping technique like that of Jackson Pollock. Rather, the creation of such effects came from the act of throwing, with a palette knife or brush, large quantities of paint onto the stretched canvas (positioned vertically). Riopelle's voluminous impasto became just as important as color. His
Alden Mason (artist) do the same thing in acrylic that I did in oil?" To develop his ideas, he spent some time working on large paper pieces in search of his voice with this new medium. His works on paper during this period were drawn with a chopstick dragging acrylic paint and painted with thin, gestural washes on paper that had been painted black. The first acrylic works on canvas were done in a similar fashion to the oil "Burpees"; he poured thin acrylic paint onto horizontally oriented, white primed canvas hoping to produce the same effects the "Burpees" had realized. By the