No longer shall I paint interiors with men reading and women knitting. I will paint living people who breathe and feel and suffer and love.

Painting picture by picture, I followed the impressions my eye took in at heightened moments. I painted only memories, adding nothing, no details that I did not see. Hence the simplicity of the paintings, their emptiness.

I sense a scream passing through nature. I painted ... the clouds as actual blood. The colour shrieked.

I was walking down the road with two friends when the sun set; suddenly, the sky turned as red as blood. I stopped and leaned against the fence, feeling unspeakably tired. Tongues of fire and blood stretched over the bluish black fjord. My friends went on walking, while I lagged behind, shivering with fear. Then I heard the enormous infinite scream of nature.

Without fear and disease, my life would be like a boat without oars.

Death is pitch-dark, but colors are light. To be a painter, one must work with rays of light.

For as long as I can remember I have suffered from a deep feeling of anxiety which I have tried to express in my art.