Without anxiety and illness I would have been like a ship without a rudder.

The way one sees is also dependent upon one's emotional state of mind. This is why a motif can be looked at in so many ways, and this is what makes art so interesting.

In my childhood I always felt that I was treated unjustly, without a mother, sick, and with the threat of punishment in Hell hanging over my head

I felt as if there were invisible threads connecting us - I felt the invisible strands of her hair still winding around me - and thus as she disappeared completely beyond the sea - I still felt it, felt the pain where my heart was bleeding - because the threads could not be severed.

I do not paint what I see, but what I saw.

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.

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