Helen Frankenthaler was an American abstract expressionist painter. She was a major contributor to the history of postwar American painting. Having exhibited her work for over six decades (the early 1950s until 2011), she spanned several generations of abstract painters while continuing to produce vital and ever-changing new work. These Helen Frankenthaler quotes will motivate you.
Best Helen Frankenthaler Quotes
- “There are no rules. That is how art is born, how breakthroughs happen. Go against the rules or ignore the rules. That is what invention is about.” ~ Helen Frankenthaler
- “I’d rather risk an ugly surprise than rely on things I know I can do.” ~ Helen Frankenthaler
- “Every canvas is a journey all its own.” ~ Helen Frankenthaler
- “You have to know how to use the accident, how to recognise it, how to control it, and ways to eliminate it so that the whole surface looks felt and born all at once.” ~ Helen Frankenthaler
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“There are no rules. Let the picture lead you where it must go.” ~ Helen Frankenthaler
- “Art has a will of its own. It has nothing to do with the taste of the moment or what’s expected of you. That’s a formula for dead art, or fashionable art.” ~ Helen Frankenthaler
- “A really good picture looks as if it’s happened at once. It’s an immediate image. For my own work, when a picture looks labored and overworked, and you can read in it as well – she did this and then she did that; there is something in it that has not got to do with beautiful art to me. And I usually throw these out, though I think very often it takes ten of those over-labored efforts to produce one really beautiful wrist motion that is synchronized with your head and heart, and you have it, and therefore it looks as if it were born in a minute.” ~ Helen Frankenthaler
- “In relations with people, as in art, if you always stick to style, manners, and what will work, and you’re never caught off guard, then some beautiful experiences never happen.” ~ Helen Frankenthaler
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“I follow the rules until I go against them all.” ~ Helen Frankenthaler
- “I don’t resent being a female painter. I don’t exploit it. I paint.” ~ Helen Frankenthaler
- “There are many accidents that are nothing but accidents-and forget it. But there are some that were brought about only because you are the person you are… you have the wherewithal, intelligence, and energy to recognize it and do something with it.” ~ Helen Frankenthaler
- “What concerns me when I work, is not whether the picture is a landscape, or whether it’s pastoral, or whether somebody will see a sunset in it. What concerns me is – did I make a beautiful picture?” ~ Helen Frankenthaler
- “I had the landscape in my arms as I painted it. I had the landscape in my mind and shoulder and wrist.” ~ Helen Frankenthaler
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“I don’t start with a color order, but find the colors as I go.” ~ Helen Frankenthaler
- “One really beautiful wrist motion, that is synchronized with your head and heart, and you have it. It looks as if it were born in a minute.” ~ Helen Frankenthaler
- “I wanted things that I couldn’t at times articulate.” ~ Helen Frankenthaler
- “What has made it work, or what makes certain paintings successful or not, has to do with my being a painter and a thinking, feeling person, more than my sex, color, height, origin.” ~ Helen Frankenthaler quotes
- “Every so often every artist feels, ‘I’ll never paint again. The muse has gone out the window.’ In 1985, I hardly painted at all for three months, and it was agonizing. I looked at reproductions. I stared at Matisse. I stared at the Old Masters. I stared at the Quattrocento. And I thought to myself – Don’t push it! If you try too hard to get at something, you almost push it away.” ~ Helen Frankenthaler
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“A picture that is beautiful, or that comes off, or that works, looks as if it was all made at one stroke.” ~ Helen Frankenthaler
- “Whatever the medium, there is the difficulty, challenge, fascination and often productive clumsiness of learning a new method: the wonderful puzzles and problems of translating with new materials.” ~ Helen Frankenthaler
- “The price for living the life I have — for any serious, devoted person, is that at times one must live alone, or feel alone. I think loneliness is associated in many people’s minds when they think about success.” ~ Helen Frankenthaler
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“A really good picture looks as if it’s happened at once. It’s an immediate image.” ~ Helen Frankenthaler
- “I have always been concerned with painting that simultaneously insists on a flat surface and then denies it.” ~ Helen Frankenthaler
- “I’ve explored a variety of directions and themes over the years. But I think in my painting you can see the signature of one artist, the work of one wrist.” ~ Helen Frankenthaler
- “The question of sex will take care of itself.” ~ Helen Frankenthaler
- “We would sift through every inch of what it was that worked, or if it didn’t, and wonder what was effective in it, in terms of paint, the subject matter, the size, the drawing.” ~ Helen Frankenthaler
