The twentieth-century artist who uses symbols is alienated because the system of symbols is a private one. After you have dealt with the symbols you are still private, you are still lonely, because you are not sure anyone will understand it except yourself. The ransom of privacy is that you are alone.

Look at it this way - a totem pole is just a decorated tree. My work is a confessional.

My art is a form of restoration in terms of my feelings to myself and to others.

Art is manipulation without intervention.

Surrealism is anathema for me. Because the surrealists made a joke of everything. And I consider life a tragedy.

The spider is an animal who eats mosquitoes. That's why I love the spider - it is the only way we have to deal with these insects.

The colour blue - that is my colour - and the colour blue means you have left the drabness of day-to-day reality to be transported into - not a world of fantasy, it’s not a world of fantasy - but a world of freedom where you can say what you like and what you don’t like. This has been expressed forever by the colour blue, which is really sky blue.