"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 am painting I have a general notion as to what I am about.
I can control the flow of paint: there is no accident."
"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."
“[A canvas is] an arena in which to act."
"Every good artist paints what he is."
"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."
"I don't work from drawings. I don't make sketches and drawings
and color sketches into a final 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."
"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 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."
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?"
“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 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.”
