In 1945, Pollock moved from New York City to Long Island. His studio was a converted barn without heating or lighting. Pollock’s aim to work directly from his unconscious led to a radical process of dripping and pouring paint over large canvases placed flat on the ground. The rhythms in Summertime reflect his belief that ‘The modern artist ... is working and expressing an inner world - in other words expressing the energy, the motion, and other inner forces’. Several commentators have suggested that a frieze of figures lies under the abstract web of paint in this work.