Jackson Pollock Quotes

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

The secret of success is… to be fully awake to everything about you.

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.

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.

Art is coming face to face with yourself.

There is no accident, just as there is no beginning and no end.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Abstract painting is abstract. It confronts you.

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 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.

You can't learn techniques and then try to become a painter. Techniques are a result.

A real friend is someone you say a sentence to and they know ten thousand words behind that sentence.

I want to express my feelings rather than illustrate them.

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

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.

A canvas is an arena in which to act.

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.

Love is friendship set to music.

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

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 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.

The painting has a life of its own

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 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.

Every good painter 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.

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

When I am in my painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing.

The strangeness will wear off and I think we will discover the deeper meanings in modern art.

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

Well, method is, it seems to me, a natural growth out of a need, and from a need the modern artist has found new ways of expressing the world about him. I happen to find ways that are different from the usual techniques, which seems a little strange at the moment, but I don't think there's anything very different about it. I paint on the floor and this isn't unusual - the Orientals did that.

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.

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.

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

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

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

My painting does not come from the easel.

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.

The painter locks himself out of his own studio. And then has to break in like a thief.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

The pictures I contemplate painting would constitute a halfway state and attempt to point out the direction of the future - without arriving there completely

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