Jackson Pollock Quotations

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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 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.

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

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.

My painting does not come from the easel.

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.

The painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through.

I hardly ever stretch the canvas before painting.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

I continue to get further away from the usual painters 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.

Painting is a state of being.

I want to express my feelings, not illustrate them.

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 don't paint nature. I am nature.

A man's life is his work; his work is his life.

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

Well, painting today certainly seems very vibrant, very alive, very exiting. Five or six of my contemporaries around New York are doing very vital work, and the direction that painting seems to be taken here - is - away from the easel - into some sort, some kind of wall, wall painting...

The process is only a means to an end-creating the painting I want. It doesn't mean anything itself. It's only a way of creating a result.

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.

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.

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.

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 don't use the accident - 'cause I deny the accident

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.

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

On the floor I am more at ease,

When I am painting I have a general notion as to what I am about. I can control the flow of paint: there is no accident.

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

Technique is just a means of arriving at a statement.

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.

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.

I do not paint nature. I am nature.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

A canvas is an arena in which to act.

I want to express my feelings rather than illustrate them.

Every good painter paints what he is.

The painting has a life of its own

Love is friendship set to music.

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

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?

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

Energy and motion made visible – memories arrested in space

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

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

Art is coming face to face with yourself.

Abstract painting is abstract. It confronts you....

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

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.

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