36 Quotes by Lee Krasner

I need to be alone for certain periods of time or I violate my own rhythm.

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.

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.

Painting, for me, when it really ‘happens,’ is as miraculous as any natural phenomenon – as say, a lettuce leaf. By ‘happens,’ I mean the painting in which the inner aspect of man and his outer aspects interlock.

We get used to a certain kind of colour 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.

People were very affected by the war. But it didn’t mean you stopped painting unless you were called into the Army; then you just couldn’t paint. But otherwise one continued.

My own image of my work is that I no sooner settle into something than a break occurs. These breaks are always painful and depressing but despite them I see that there’s a consistency that holds out, but is hard to define.

At that point it certainly would be called abstract. That is to say, you had a model and there’d be one or two or three people there drawing the model but otherwise you had abstractions all around the room, even though the model was in front of you.

I knew de Kooning and I went to his studio so I knew about de Kooning’s work. But only a little handful knew about it, you know. Maybe there were ten people that knew about it.