Oscar Mascareñas
Songs for Jackson Pollock
A searing series of vocal essays created by composer and voice artist Óscar Mascareñas.
The album Songs for Jackson Pollock was conceived as a response to the exhibition ‘Blind Spots’ - held at the Tate Liverpool (UK) in the summer 2015 (and later at the Dallas Museum of Art in Texas) - which showcased works by 20th-century American artist Jackson Pollock, in particular his Black Paintings. The works themselves and the very powerful presence of the artist in and through them - indeed beyond the boundaries of the canvas - had a rather profound impact on me at the time, and has continued to influence my life and endeavours ever since. After my return to Ireland, I decided I wanted to embody such an experience through sound, and more particularly, vocal sound - given the plasticity of the voice. After two years of work that involved devising, recording and mixing twelve distinct pieces, the album was finally conceived.