I live in a house that's incredibly old, and it's typical that part of it is slightly in the ground. It's very earthed. It's almost like living in a hobbit house.

I went and studied graphic design, because it seemed to me that advertising is more honest - the image actually has a function. But once I started on that, I realized that was really boring.

I had a job as an illustrator, and I wanted to change the direction of my work. I moved to the country, and immediately I started to paint fairies and trolls.

Not all meanings are meant to be clear at once. Some ideas take time. Some words are designed to lead us on inner journeys, with truth hidden deep inside them.

We almost need another word for fairy, that's the thing. Once people get to see what fairies' real power is, then they understand.

Once upon a time, I thought faeries lived only in books, old folktales, and the past. That was before they burst upon my life as vibrant, luminous beings, permeating my art and my everyday existence, causing glorious havoc.

Art always used to involve spirit. Painters painted spirit. They painted by commission things to go into churches, and that was painting spirit. Or they would paint people of wealth, and they would try to show how they had power, and again, this is sort of spirit.