I dont want to create a monster; I want to make something which is new, exceptional, something that only I do...something that references tradition, but is still new.

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

When I began as an artist, I already did not like expressionism, or abstract expressionism, because abstract painting had already been done. I did not want to belong to any one group or the other, and I'm not one or the other.

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.

You dig in and you find something.

I dont want to create a monster; I want to make something which is new, exceptional, something that only I do...something that references tradition, but is still new.

Talent seduces us into interpretation. My sister could draw wonderfully, but she would never have hit upon the idea of becoming a painter. I never had that extreme talent.