I had always loved expressionist painting, like every European. In fact I admired it all the more because these were precisely the paintings despised by my father's generation.

I would say for everyday I build buildings or houses like a bricklayer with canvas and paint.

I think the defect actually lies with male artists. Male artists often border on idiocy, while it's important for a woman not to be that way, if possible. Women are outstanding in science, just as good as men.

No one who looks at my paintings can see whether a painting is upside down or not anymore. I've made or developed so many image models that some people have given up trying to keep track of me. But others have only one or two ways of doing things and are successful with that.

All German painters have a neurosis with Germany's past: war, the postwar period most of all, East Germany. I addressed all of this in a deep depression and under great pressure. My paintings are battles, if you will.

What I could never escape was Germany, and being German.

Unlike the expressionists, I have never been interested in renewing the world through the vehicle of art.