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

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.

I learned early about the misery and dangers of life, and about the afterlife, about the external punishment which awaited the children of sin in Hell.

I don’t believe in an art that is not born out of man’s need to open his heart.

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.

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.

Photography is an art which touches and grips one's own heart's blood.