Number 22, 1949 was created during Pollock's most important period, 1947-1950, when he fully mastered the technique that enabled him to extend the limits of painting as it had previously been perceived. He had been struggling since the early 1940s to find the means to release onto the canvas the powerful subject matter that haunted him, subjects derived from the unconscious. Brushwork had somehow inhibited him and he turned increasingly to the liberating techniques of dripping and pouring fluid paint--oil, aluminum, and enamel--from sticks and brushes onto unprimed canvas that was tacked to the floor of his studio in Springs, Long Island.

The pouring technique was phenomenally liberating. Pollock withdrew from the unconscious (or what he took to be the unconscious, which necessarily stored all that he had
absorbed not simply from life but from his whole working
history) an incredible range of feeling. Each painting is
unique; Pollock never repeats himself or lapses into
formula. His transforming powers, within single works, or
from painting to painting, are uncanny, as early crusts
become airy webs and dense, atomized clusters achieve a
gauzy shimmer. The rhythmic repetitions of tossed paint
meandor, flow, bite, sear, and bleed, never turning into
pattern or decoration, always renewing themselves with
consummate freshness. (E. Frank, Jackson Pollock, New York
1983, p. 66)

Number 22, 1949 is exceedingly rich, its surface extremely varied. The patterns and webs of the dripped and poured paint create great depth over the majority of the painting's surface, while still pulling back from the edges, reflecting Pollock's most characteristic compositional technique. His palette is vibrant and varied, with bold yellow, red, green, blue-grey, aluminum, and white. This richness of color is emphasized by the calligraphic black strokes, which call to mind Pollock's totemic paintings from the early and mid-1940s.