Pollock was also very interested in nature. Jackson Pollock studied with Thomas Hart Benton for only about two years, but they remained friends until Jackson's untimely death. The mid-1930s were a bit of a difficult time for Pollock. He had difficulty finding work because America was in the midst of the Great Depression. In 1935 Jackson Pollock joined the Federal Art Project of the Works Progress Administration. He, along with five thousand other artists, were hired at some point by the project to paint murals in public buildings to make art part of everyday American life. The influence in this was the Mexican mural program, which “hired artists for workers' wages” (Cernuschi, 29). The main Mexican muralists were Diego Rivera, Jose Clemente Orozco and David Alfara Siqueiros. Pollock had been interested in Orozco's work since the 1930s, and in 1936 took a course called A Laboratory of Modern Techniques in Art with Siqueiros. Jackson explored powerful expressionism through experimentation with different techniques in this course. They painted on a large scale, used pouring, dripping and splashing techniques, and Siqueiros taught them futurism and how to paint using emotional impulses. The futurists believed that you should not only move the viewer physically but also emotionally. The style of Mexican muralists Orozco and Siqueiros influenced Jackson's technique in later paintings such as Bald Woman with Skeleton, which he painted in 1938. In 1937 Jackson met artist-critic John Graham after writing him a letter asking to meet. Graham had been a major influence on Pollock after writing an article entitled Primitive Art and Picasso. Graham stated in the article that “evocative art is the means and result of coming into contact with the powers of our unconscious” (Fineberg, 88). Graham believed that “the unconscious mind provides essential knowledge and creative powers for the artist” (Fineberg, 88). Pollock had become very interested in the interior content of paintings rather than the figurative content, also known as Surrealism. Picasso and Miro were the most popular surrealists of this period and Pollock's work began to move away from the ideas of Benton and the muralists and began to reflect their style.