Top 79 Jackson Pollock Quotes From The Pioneering American Artist

Born on 28 January 1912, Jackson Pollock is an eminent American painter, celebrated for his contributions to abstract expressionism and the technique of drip painting.

Jackson Pollock, highly inspired by the contemporary Mexican muralists, started off with liquid painting that ultimately propagated the technique that he coined as “drip painting”. Drip painting comprises the techniques of splashing, dripping, or pouring paints all over the canvas laid out horizontally.

Jackson Pollock has been hailed as the harbinger of the abstract expressionism technique in painting. Along with William de Kooning, this versatile American painter and artist used this technique of abstract expressionism to project abstract emotions. His wife, Lee Krasner, also a painter, was a major source of inspiration for the painter. Nevertheless, he fell a major victim of alcoholism that took a heavy toll on his life. The great American Painter encountered a fatal accident and died in the year 1956. These Jackson Pollock quotes are all about the emotions that a modern painter cannot express through words so read through these Jackson Pollock quotes about life, Jackson Pollock quotes on mixing colors, Jackson Pollock quotes about his art, funny Jackson Pollock quotes, Jackson Pollock quotes about persona identity, and other quotations to know more facts about the life of the painter.

If you enjoyed these quotations then don't miss out on Susan Sontag quotes and [David Bowie quotes].

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Jackson Pollock, as a painter and artist, loved to experiment with the techniques and forms while playing with colors. To know more about the painter, check out these Jackson Pollock quotes on what his art means.

1. “Painting is self-discovery.”

- Jackson Pollock.

2. “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.”

- Jackson Pollock.

3. “You can't learn techniques and then try to become a painter.”

- Jackson Pollock.

4. “Abstract painting is abstract. It confronts you.”

- Jackson Pollock.

5. “It's all a big game of construction - some with a brush - some with a shovel - some choose a pen.”

- Jackson Pollock.

6. “The process is only a means to an end-creating the painting I want.”

- Jackson Pollock.

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

- Jackson Pollock.

8. “Abstract art should be enjoyed just as music is enjoyed – after a while you may like it or you may not.”

- Jackson Pollock.

9. “Most of the paint I use is a liquid, flowing kind of paint...”

- Jackson Pollock.

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

- Jackson Pollock.

11. “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."

- Jackson Pollock.

12. “I hardly ever stretch the canvas before painting.”

- Jackson Pollock.

13. “The idea of an isolated American painting, so popular in this country during the thirties, seems absurd to me.”

- Jackson Pollock.

14. “I am able to be more free and to have greater freedom and move about the canvas, with greater ease.”

- Jackson Pollock.

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

- Jackson Pollock.

16. “With experience it seems to be possible to control the flow of paint, to a great extent.”

- Jackson Pollock.

17. "I need the resistance of the hard surface."

- Jackson Pollock.

18. “When you're painting out of your unconscious, figures are bound to emerge.”

- Jackson Pollock.

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

- Jackson Pollock.

20. “Art is coming face to face with yourself.”

- Jackson Pollock.

21. “Most modern painters work from a different source. They work from within.”

- Jackson Pollock.

22. “The modern artists have found new ways and new means of making their statements.”

- Jackson Pollock.

Jackson Pollock has received both positive comments and negative criticisms but that did not stop him from pursuing the dream that he had as a painter, so these quotations are all about his struggle. The painter within him recognized the essence of artistry. Here are some quotations from the critics of the artist.

23. “There’s a misconception about Pollock that he just sprang up out of nowhere because his art was so revolutionary.”

- Helen A. Harrison, 'Jackson Pollock: Phaidon Focus'.

24. "The unconscious, as artistic, goes after unrestraint, but unrestraint as accurate; and when unrestraint is accurate, the effect on mind is still that of beauty."

- Mr. Siegel, ‘Beauty and Jackson Pollock, Too’.

25. "Jackson was the greatest painter this country has produced."

- Clement Greenberg.

26. “Rothko, Newman, Pollock and Baziotes all believed that these sources expressed a tragic view of life that had never lost its validity.”

- Morgan Falconer, 'Painting Beyond Pollock'.

27. “Pollock danced some of the most beautiful paintings in the world.”

- Unknown.*

28. "His work is successful, there is in this work, power and calm, intensity and rightness, unrestraint and accuracy—and these, felt at once, make for beauty."

- Mr. Siegel.

29. “Anyone can fling paint around, and this was my point. You can do that, but you don’t necessarily come up with anything.”

- Helen A. Harrison, 'Jackson Pollock: Phaidon Focus'.

30. "Pollock would often begin with some sort of figurative device to which he would then respond—and eventually bury under layers of paint. Letters and numbers, moreover, frequently appear in works of the early 1940s."

- Sue Taylor.

31. “The big shock of my life was Abstract Expressionism - Pollock, de Kooning, those guys. It changed my work. I was an academically trained student, and suddenly you could pour paint, smear it on, broom it on!”

- LeRoy Neiman.

32. “I was a student at Harvard, and that's where I learned about...avant-garde music. Jackson Pollock, abstract expressionism and painting were well known.”

- Henry Flynt.

Jackson Pollock associated his art with emotion and this made the great artist excel in his endeavors. The more he experimented the more he learned that eventually led to the movement called "abstract expressionism". Check out these Jackson Pollock quotes as these quotations demonstrate what this prolific artist had to say about the emotions that shape up the life of every artist.

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

- Jackson Pollock.

34. “A canvas is an arena in which to act.”

- Jackson Pollock.

35. “The brushes I use are more sticks rather than brushes – the brush doesn’t touch the surface on the canvas, it’s just above.”

- Jackson Pollock.

36. “It is only when I lose contact with the painting that the result is a mess.”

- Jackson Pollock.

37. “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.”

- Jackson Pollock.

38. “I feel nearer...since this way I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting.”

- Jackson Pollock.

39. “I prefer sticks, trowels, knives and dripping fluid paint or a heavy impasto with sand, broken glass or other foreign matter added.”

- Jackson Pollock.

40. “I approach painting in the same sense as one approaches drawing, that is, it's direct.”

- Jackson Pollock.

41. “Energy and motion made visible – memories arrested in space”

- Jackson Pollock.

42. “I do have a general notion of what I'm about and what the results will be.”

- Jackson Pollock.

43. “Techniques are a result.”

- Jackson Pollock.

44. “Something in me knows where I’m going, and - well, painting is a state of being.”

- Jackson Pollock.

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

- Jackson Pollock.

46. “I want to express my feelings, not illustrate them.”

- Jackson Pollock.

47. “A man's life is his work; his work is his life.”

- Jackson Pollock.

48. “Today painters do not have to go to a subject matter outside of themselves.”

- Jackson Pollock.

49. “Well, painting today certainly seems very vibrant, very alive, very exciting.”

- Jackson Pollock.

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

- Jackson Pollock.

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

- Jackson Pollock.

52. “Love is friendship set to music.”

- Jackson Pollock.

Here are some of the best quotations straight from the life of the renowned American painter.

53. “When I say artist I mean the man who is building things.”

- Jackson Pollock.

54. “Every good artist paints what he is.”

- Jackson Pollock.

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

- Jackson Pollock.

56. “I'm very representational some of the time, and a little all of the time.”

- Jackson Pollock.

57. “I've had a period of drawing on canvas in black.”

- Jackson Pollock.

58. “As to what I would like to be, it is difficult to say. An artist of some kind.”

- Jackson Pollock.

59. “Well, method is, it seems to me, a natural growth out of a need.”

- Jackson Pollock.

60. “On the floor I am more at ease.”

- Jackson Pollock.

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

- Jackson Pollock.

62. “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.”

- Jackson Pollock.

63. “I don't paint nature. I am nature.”

- Jackson Pollock.

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

- Jackson Pollock.

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

- Jackson Pollock.

66. “It doesn't mean anything itself. It's only a way of creating a result.”

- Jackson Pollock.

67. "I prefer to tack the unstretched canvas to the hard wall or the floor."

- Jackson Pollock.

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

- Jackson Pollock.

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

- Jackson Pollock.

70. “My painting does not come from the easel.”

- Jackson Pollock.

71. “The basic problems of contemporary painting are independent of any one country.”

- Jackson Pollock.

72. “My opinion is that new needs need new techniques.”

- Jackson Pollock.

73. “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.”

- Jackson Pollock.

74. “If nothing else I shall always study the Arts.”

- Jackson Pollock.

75. “An American is an American and his painting would naturally be qualified by the fact, whether he wills or not.”

- Jackson Pollock.

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

- Jackson Pollock.

77. "This is akin to the method of the Indian sand painters of the West."

- Jackson Pollock.

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

- Jackson Pollock.

79. “Painting is a state of being.”

- Jackson Pollock.

*Do you know where this quote originated? Please email us to let us know at [email protected]

Here at Kidadl, we have carefully created lots of interesting family-friendly quotes for everyone to enjoy! If you liked our suggestions for Jackson Pollock quotes then why not take a look at Henri Matisse quotes, or Georgia O'Keeffe quotes.