Best 68 quotes of Jackson Pollock on MyQuotes

Abstract painting is abstract. It confronts you.

Abstract painting is abstract. It confronts you. There was a reviewer a while back who wrote that my pictures didn't have any beginning or any end. He didn't mean it as a compliment, but it was.

All cultures have had means and techniques of expressing their immediate aims - the Chinese, the Renaissance, all cultures. The thing that interests me is that today painters do not have to go to a subject matter outside of themselves.

A method of painting is a natural growth out of a need. I want to express my feelings rather than illustrate them. Technique is just a means of arriving at a statement.

Art is coming face to face with yourself.

As to what I would like to be, it is difficult to say. An artist of some kind. If nothing else I shall always study the Arts.

Bums are the well-to-do of this day. They didn't have as far to fall.

Energy and motion made visible – memories arrested in spaceTechnic is the result of a need new needs demand new technics total control denial of the accident States of order organic intensity energy and motion made visible memories arrested in space, human needs and motives acceptance.

Every good painter paints what he is.

He drove his kind of realism at me so hard I bounced right into nonobjective painting.

How do you know when you're finished making love?

I am doubtful of any talent, so whatever I choose to be, will be accomplished only by long study and work

I can control the flow of paint: there is no accident.

I continue to get further away from the usual painter's tools such as easel, palette, brushes, etc. I prefer sticks, trowels, knives and dripping fluid paint or a heavy impasto with sand, broken glass or other foreign matter added.

I continue to get further away from the usual painter's tools such as easel, palette, brushes, etc.

I don't work from drawings and colour sketches into a final painting. Painting, I think, today - the more immediate, the more direct - the greater the possibilities of making a direct - of making a statement.

I don't work from drawings. I don't make sketches and drawings and color sketches into a final painting.

If people would just look at the paintings, I don't think they would have any trouble enjoying them. It's like looking at a bed of flowers, you don't tear your hair out over what it means.

I hardly ever stretch the canvas before painting.

I have no fear of making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own.

I'm very representational some of the time, and a little all of the time. But when you're painting out of your unconscious, figures are bound to emerge.

In response to the question, 'How do you know when you're finished?' Pollock replied, 'How do you know when you're finished making love?

It [abstract art] should be enjoyed just as music is enjoyed after a while you may like it or you may not.

It doesn't make much difference how the paint is put on as long as something has been said. Technique is just a means of arriving at a statement.

It doesn't matter how the paint is put on, as long as something is said.

It is only when I lose contact with the painting that the result is a mess. Otherwise there is pure harmony, an easy give and take, and the painting comes out well.

It seems to me that the modern painter cannot express this age, the airplane, the atom bomb, the radio, in the old forms of the Renaissance or of any other past culture. Each age find its own technique.

I've been thinking of death a lot, and I am amazed by its inevitability, frightened, as we all are, of the totally unknown, and yet feel a long sleep is somehow earned by those of us who live on the edge.

I've had a period of drawing on canvas in black - with some of my early images coming thru -, think the non-objectivists will find them disturbing - and the kids who think it simple to splash a 'Pollock' out.

I want to express my feelings, not illustrate them.

Love is friendship set to music.

Modern art to me is nothing more than the expression of contemporary aims of the age that we're living in.

Modern art to me is nothing more than the expression of contemporary aims of the age we’re living in. All cultures have had means and techniques of expressing their immediate aims – the Chinese, the Renaissance, all cultures. The thing that interests me is that today painters do not have to go to a subject matter outside of themselves. Most modern painters work from a different source, they work from within.

Most of the paint I use is a liquid, flowing kind of paint. The brushes I use are more a sticks rather than brushes – the brush doesn’t touch the surface on the canvas, it’s just above [so] I am able to be more free and to have greater freedom and move about the canvas, with greater ease.

My concern is with the rhythms of nature I work inside out, like nature.

My opinion is that new needs need new techniques. And the modern artists have found new ways and new means of making their statements.

My painting does not come from the easel.

My paintings do not have a center, but depend on the same amount of interest throughout.

New needs need new techniques. And the modern artists have found new ways and new means of making their statements... the modern painter cannot express this age, the airplane, the atom bomb, the radio, in the old forms of the Renaissance or of any other past culture.

On the floor I am more at ease. I feel nearer, more part of the painting, since this way I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting.

Painting is no problem. The problem is what to do when you're not painting.

Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is.

People have always frightened and bored me consequently I have been within my own shell.

Something in me knows where I’m going, and - well, painting is a state of being. ... Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is.

Technic is the result of a need new needs demand new technics total control denial of the accident States of order organic intensity energy and motion made visible memories arrested in space, human needs and motives acceptance

The idea of an isolated American painting , so popular in this country during the thirties, seems absurd to me, just as the idea of a purely American mathematics or physics would seem absurd... And in another sense, the problem doesn't exist at all; or, if it did, would solve itself: An American is an American and his painting would naturally be qualified by the fact, whether he wills or not. But the basic problems of contemporary painting are independent of any one country.

The modern artist is living in a mechanical age and we have a mechanical means of representing objects in nature such as the camera and photograph. The modern artist, it seems to me, is working and expressing an inner world - in other words - expressing the energy, the motion, and other inner forces.

The modern artist is living in a mechanical age and we have a mechanical means of representing objects in nature such as the camera and photograph. The modern artist, it seems to me, is working and expressing an inner world - in other words - expressing the energy , the motion and the other inner forces ... the modern artist is working with space and time , and expressing his feelings rather than illustrating.

The modern artist... is working and expressing an inner world - in other words - expressing the energy, the motion, and other inner forces.

The modern artist is working with space and time, and expressing his feelings rather than illustrating.