Top 79 Quotes & Sayings by Jackson Pollock
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American artist Jackson Pollock.
Last updated on September 17, 2024.
The modern artist is working with space and time, and expressing his feelings rather than illustrating.
Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is.
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.
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.
The modern artist... is working and expressing an inner world - in other words - expressing the energy, the motion, and other inner forces.
I hardly ever stretch the canvas before painting.
When I'm painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing. It's only after a get acquainted period that I see what I've been about. I've no fears about making changes for the painting has a life of its own.
My painting does not come from the easel.
Bums are the well-to-do of this day. They didn't have as far to fall.
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.
I continue to get further away from the usual painter's tools such as easel, palette, brushes, etc.
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.
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.
He drove his kind of realism at me so hard I bounced right into nonobjective painting.
The painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through.
My paintings do not have a center, but depend on the same amount of interest throughout.
The strangeness will wear off and I think we will discover the deeper meanings in modern art.
Every good painter paints what he is.
I don't work from drawings. I don't make sketches and drawings and color sketches into a final painting.
I have no fear of making changes, destroying the image, etc., because the painting has a life of its own.
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.
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.
When I say artist I mean the man who is building things - creating molding the earth - whether it be the plains of the west - or the iron ore of Penn. It's all a big game of construction - some with a brush - some with a shovel - some choose a pen.
When I am in my painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing.
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.
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.
A real friend is someone you say a sentence to and they know ten thousand words behind that sentence.
Love is friendship set to music.
Painting is a state of being.
My concern is with the rhythms of nature I work inside out, like nature.
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 want to express my feelings, not illustrate them.
Art is coming face to face with yourself.
Modern art to me is nothing more than the expression of contemporary aims of the age that we're living in.
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.
I can control the flow of paint: there is no accident.
Technique is just a means of arriving at a statement.
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.
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?
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 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'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 want to express my feelings rather than illustrate them.
I don't paint nature. I am nature.
A canvas is an arena in which to act.
You can't learn techniques and then try to become a painter. Techniques are a result.
A man's life is his work; his work is his life.
Painting is no problem. The problem is what to do when you're not painting.
People have always frightened and bored me consequently I have been within my own shell.
I do not paint nature. I am nature.
Abstract painting is abstract. It confronts you.
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.
When I am in a painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing. It is only after a sort of 'get acquainted' period that I see what I have been about. I have no fears about making changes, destroying the image, etc, because the painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through. 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.
The secret of success is… to be fully awake to everything about you.
I don't use the accident - 'cause I deny the accident
It doesn't matter how the paint is put on, as long as something is said.
There is no accident, just as there is no beginning and no end.
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.
With experience it seems to be possible to control the flow of paint, to a great extent, and I don't use - I don't use the accident - 'cause I deny the accident... it's quite different from working, say, from a still life where you set up objects and work directly from them. I do have a general notion of what I'm about and what the results will be. I approach painting in the same sense as one approaches drawing, that is, it's direct.
It [abstract art] should be enjoyed just as music is enjoyed after a while you may like it or you may not.
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