"In the most positive sense [the impact of Jackson Pollock on Helen] I think it was a sense of being as open and free and surprised as possible, with a magic sense of -.. ..being able to know when to stop, when to labor, when to be puzzled, when to be satisfied, when to recognize beautiful or strange or ugly or clumsy, and to be free with what you are making that comes out of you.. ..I didn't paint new long canvases until I had seen his [Pollock] and I'm sure that Pollock's ambiance affected me tremendously. I was much more drawn to Pollock's painting on the raw canvas than I was to de Kooning's easel cuisine and there it's a matter of sensibility. Aesthetically, socially, in every way the de Kooning thing seemed to be much more productive, planned, admirable at the time [early 1950's]. But I didn't think so. I thought that Pollock was really the one living in nature much more than Bill [de Kooning]."