movement centered around New York in the 1940s and 1950s. He was born in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania
, and attended Girard College
, an academy in Philadelphia for fatherless boys. He attended Boston University
, spent summers from 1956-62 painting in Provincetown, Massachusetts
, and died in New York City
of a rheumatic heart disease. He was married to Elizabeth Vincent Parsons, a British ballet dancer.
As with Jackson Pollock
and other Abstract Expressionists, he was labeled an "action painter
" because of his seemingly spontaneous and intense style, focusing less, or not at all, on figures or imagery, but on the actual brush strokes and use of canvas.
I paint not the things I see but the feelings they arouse in me.
People sometimes think I take a white canvas and paint a black sign on it,but this is not true.I paint the white as well as the black and the white is just as important.
If I feel a painting I'm working on doesn't have imagery or emotion, I paint it out and work over it until it does.
In Braque and Gris, they seemed to have idea of the organization beforehand in their mind. With Bonnard, he is organizing in front of you. You can tell in Fernand Leger|Leger just when he discovered how to make it like an engine.. ..What’s wrong with that? You see it in Barney (= Barnett Newman) too, that he knows what a painting should be. He paints as he thinks painting should be, which his pretty heroic..
If you’re a painter, you are not alone. There’s no way to be alone. You think and you care and you’re with all the people who care. You think you care and you’re with all the people who care, including the young people who don’t know they do yet. Tomlin in his late paintings knew this, Jackson Pollock|Jackson always knew it: that if you meant it enough..