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 o… - Jackson Pollock

The thing that interests me is that today painters do not have to go to a subject-matter outside themselves. Modern painters work in a different way. They work from within.

The important thing is that Clyff Still – you know his work? – and Rothko, and I – we've changed the nature of painting.. .I don't mean there aren't any other good painters. Bill [ Willem the Kooning ] is a good painter, but he's a 'French' painter [Pollock meant: a French-abstract style]. I told him so, the last time I saw him after his last show,. ..all those pictures in his last show start with an image. You can see it even though he's covered it up, or tried to.. ..Style – that's the French part of it. He has to cover it up with style.. [answering Seldon Rodman's question]

My painting does not come from the easel. I hardly ever stretch my canvas before painting. I prefer to tack the unstretched canvas to the hard wall or the floor. I need the resistance of a hard surface. On the floor I am more at ease. I feel nearer, more a part of the painting, since this way I can walk around it, work from the four sides and literally be in the painting. This is akin to the method of the Indian sand painters of the West.

I don't care for 'Abstract expressionism'.. ..and it is certainly not 'non-objective', and not 'non-representational' either. I'm very representational some of the time, and a little all of the time. But when you're painting out of your consciousness, figures are bound to emerge. We're all of us influenced by Freud, I guess. I've been a Jungian for a long time.. .Painting is a state of being.. .Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is.