72 Jackson Pollock Quotes from the Notable American Artist

Paul Jackson Pollock was a famous painter born in 1912 in Wyoming.

He moved to New York in 1930 and studied art under Thomas Hart Benton.

Pollock admired the murals of José Clemente Orozco and Diego Rivera and worked on various art projects in New York during the 1930s.

In 1943 Peggy Guggenheim gave him a contract allowing him to focus solely on painting.

Jackson Pollock Quotes

His unique “drip style” of painting emerged in 1947 revolutionizing contemporary art and Abstract Expressionism.

Pollock married artist Lee Krasner in 1945 and had his first European solo exhibition in 1950.

He died in a car accident in 1956 in New York.

Here are some of the top quotes by Jackson Pollock.


Best Jackson Pollock Quotes

Best-Jackson-Pollock-Quotes

I need the resistance of the hard surface. ~ Jackson Pollock.

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

Abstract painting is abstract. It confronts you. ~ Jackson Pollock.

Well, painting today certainly seems very vibrant, very alive, very exciting. ~ Jackson Pollock.

You can’t learn techniques and then try to become a painter. ~ Jackson Pollock.

Today painters do not have to go to a subject matter outside of themselves. ~ Jackson Pollock.

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

My opinion is that new needs need new techniques. ~ Jackson Pollock.

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.

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

I prefer sticks, trowels, knives and dripping fluid paint or a heavy impasto with sand, broken glass or other foreign matter added. ~ Jackson Pollock.

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.

As to what I would like to be, it is difficult to say. An artist of some kind. ~ Jackson Pollock.

I want to express my feelings, not illustrate them. ~ Jackson Pollock.

Top Jackson Pollock Quotes

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.

Painting is no problem. The problem is what to do when you’re not painting. ~ Jackson Pollock.

The idea of an isolated American painting, so popular in this country during the thirties, seems absurd to me. ~ Jackson Pollock.

I approach painting in the same sense as one approaches drawing, that is, it’s direct. ~ Jackson Pollock.

A canvas is an arena in which to act. ~ Jackson Pollock.

The basic problems of contemporary painting are independent of any one country. ~ Jackson Pollock.

I’ve had a period of drawing on canvas in black. ~ Jackson Pollock.

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

Top-Jackson-Pollock-Quotes

Every good painter paints what he is. ~ Jackson Pollock.

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

I hardly ever stretch the canvas before painting. ~ Jackson Pollock.

Famous Jackson Pollock Quotes

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

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

An American is an American and his painting would naturally be qualified by the fact, whether he wills or not. ~ Jackson Pollock.

If nothing else I shall always study the Arts. ~ Jackson Pollock.

Love is friendship set to music. ~ Jackson Pollock.

The process is only a means to an end-creating the painting I want. ~ Jackson Pollock.

The modern artists have found new ways and new means of making their statements. ~ Jackson Pollock.

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. ~ Jackson Pollock.

Jackson Pollock Quotes on Painting

When I am in my painting, I’m not aware of what I’m doing. ~ Jackson Pollock.

It is only when I lose contact with the painting that the result is a mess. ~ Jackson Pollock.

When you’re painting out of your unconscious, figures are bound to emerge. ~ Jackson Pollock.

Something in me knows where I’m going, and – well, painting is a state of being. ~ Jackson Pollock.

Abstract art should be enjoyed just as music is enjoyed – after a while you may like it or you may not. ~ Jackson Pollock.

I’m very representational some of the time, and a little all of the time. ~ Jackson Pollock.

When I say artist I mean the man who is building things. ~ Jackson Pollock.

Most modern painters work from a different source. They work from within. ~ Jackson Pollock.

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.

Most of the paint I use is a liquid, flowing kind of paint… ~ Jackson Pollock.

Popular Jackson Pollock Quotes

With experience it seems to be possible to control the flow of paint, to a great extent. ~ Jackson Pollock.

It doesn’t mean anything itself. It’s only a way of creating a result. ~ Jackson Pollock.

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

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

I do have a general notion of what I’m about and what the results will be. ~ Jackson Pollock.

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

This is akin to the method of the Indian sand painters of the West. ~ Jackson Pollock.

Painting is self-discovery. ~ Jackson Pollock.

Bums are the well-to-do of this day. They didn’t have as far to fall. ~ Jackson Pollock.

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

I don’t paint nature. I am nature. ~ Jackson Pollock.

I am able to be more free and to have greater freedom and move about the canvas, with greater ease. ~ Jackson Pollock.

Memorable Jackson Pollock Quotes

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.

Art is coming face to face with yourself. ~ Jackson Pollock.

Painting is a state of being. ~ Jackson Pollock.

I continue to get further away from the usual painter’s tools such as easel, palette, brushes, etc. ~ Jackson Pollock.

Techniques are a result. ~ Jackson Pollock.

Every good artist paints what he is. ~ Jackson Pollock.

Famous Jackson Pollock Quotes

On the floor I am more at ease. ~ Jackson Pollock.

It’s all a big game of construction – some with a brush – some with a shovel – some choose a pen. ~ Jackson Pollock.

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.

My painting does not come from the easel. ~ Jackson Pollock.

Well, method is, it seems to me, a natural growth out of a need. ~ Jackson Pollock.

A man’s life is his work; his work is his life. ~ Jackson Pollock.

I don’t work from drawings. I don’t make sketches and drawings and color sketches into a final painting. ~ Jackson Pollock.

I feel nearer…since this way I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting. ~ Jackson Pollock.

I prefer to tack the unstretched canvas to the hard wall or the floor. ~ Jackson Pollock.

It doesn’t matter how the paint is put on, as long as something is said. ~ Jackson Pollock.


So these were the 72 top Jackson Pollock quotes about art, love and life.

If you like these quotes and sayings, then you can also read my other posts on Duke Nukem quotes and Ryan Reynolds quotes.

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Chandan Negi
Chandan Negi

I’m the Founder of Internet Pillar - I love sharing quotes and motivational content to inspire and motivate people - #quotes #motivation #internetpillar