Lee Krasner Quotes on Art

Lee Krasner was an American abstract expressionist painter who was married to Jackson Pollock. She is best known for her large abstract paintings and collages. She produced paintings, collages, prints, and works on paper. Famous Lee Krasner paintings include “Imperative”, “Gold Stone”, “Polar Stampede”, “Number 3 (Untitled)”, and “Night Creatures”.

Mini biography: Born Lenore Krassner on the 27th of October, 1908 in Brooklyn, New York, United States of America. Her mother was Chane Weiss and her father was Joseph Krasner. Lee Krasner died of natural causes on the 19th of June, 1984 in New York City, New York, U.S.A. Krasner was 75 years old when she passed away.

Famous Lee Krasner Art Quotes

We get used to a certain kind of color of form or format, and it’s acceptable. And to puncture that is sticking your neck out a bit. And then pretty soon, that’s very acceptable. Lee Krasner

It would start with a color, a form, and it begins dictating to me what’s needed in terms of color as well as form. Lee Krasner

I like to surprise myself. I have to be interested in what I’m doing. Surprise, for me, is as important as it is to anyone that views it once it becomes a painting. Lee Krasner

I never violate an inner rhythm. I loathe to force anything.. I don’t know if the inner rhythm is Eastern or Western. I know it is essential for me. I listen to it and I stay with it. I have always been this way. I have regards for the inner voice. Lee Krasner

I think my painting is so autobiographical if anyone can take the trouble to read it. Lee Krasner

All my work keeps going like a pendulum.. it seems to swing back to something I was involved with earlier, or it moves between horizontality and verticality, circularlity, or a composite of them. For me, I suppose, that change is the only constant. Lee Krasner

I merge what I call the organic with what I call the abstract, which is what you are calling the geometric. As I see both scales, I need to merge these two in the ever-present. What they symbolize I have never stopped to decide. You might want to read it as matter and spirit and the need to merge as against the need to separate. Or it can be read as male and female. Lee Krasner

I think every once in a while I feel the need to break my medium.. .if I have been doing a very large painting I like to drop into something in small scale. It is a challenge to go into this size. It is just to hold my own interest, and then each media has its own conditions. Lee Krasner

If you can’t get out of school and get off the campus and experience life in the world of reality, that’s pretty depressing. There’s a lot of what I call campus art around now. And I think campus art is fine while you’re in school. But that’s your early stages of learning. If you’re a pianist, you have to learn your keyboard.. but then you’ve got to get on with it. Lee Krasner

I do not mean extended, to mean aesthetic definition of space. For me, it is a matter of whether the canvas allows me to breathe or not – if the canvas soars into space or if it is earthbound. When it is earthbound it irritates me enormously. I would like to soar in a canvas. Lee Krasner

I like a canvas to breathe and be alive. Be alive is the point. And, as the limitations are something called pigment and canvas, let’s see if I can do it. Lee Krasner

With Jackson there was quiet solitude. Just to sit and look at the landscape. An inner quietness. After dinner, to sit on the back porch and look at the light. No need for talking. For any kind of communication. Lee Krasner

I think, if one is a painter, all you experience does come out when you’re painting. Lee Krasner

More on Abstract Artist Lee Krasner

How has Lee Krasner influenced your art making? Is she one of your favorite abstract expressionist woman artists? What about her husband? Let us know what you think about Lee Krasner in the comments below.

For more on the famous American abstract painter here’s three excellent Lee Krasner books: “Lee Krasner“, “Ninth Street Women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: Five Painters and the Movement That Changed Modern Art“, and “Lee Krasner: A Biography“.

Related or similar popular artists and celebrities include: Jackson Pollock, Elaine de Kooning, Barnett Newman, Helen Frankenthaler, Robert Ryman, and other Famous American Artists.