I did not always trust my teachers, because I found them too weak. I was looking for something that could take me in a new direction, for things that I could admire. And because it was so hard to find this, I became a sort of outsider. That's why I began to identify with the insane, "outsider" artists.

I don't know who made up this sort of greatest-hits list for artists. If one artist isn't moving forward anymore, then it's assumed another one is going to take their place. With Francis Bacon's death, a whole genre of art died.

What counts most is finding new ways to get the world down in paint on my own terms.

I paint German artists whom I admire. I paint their pictures, their work as painters, and their portraits too. But oddly enough, each of these portraits ends up as a picture of a woman with blonde hair. I myself have never been able to work out why this happens.

I don't see art as entertainment.

I started collecting my artist friends, artists like myself who nobody had yet noticed. In everything, all I am collecting, so to speak, are my friends - artist friends.

An object painted upside down is suitable for painting because it is unsuitable as an object.