My Paintings Are Wiser Than I Am.

Painting Is Consequently An Almost Blind, Desperate Effort, Like That Of A Person Abandoned, Helpless, In Totally Incomprehensible Surroundings.

When I Look Back On The Townscapes Now, They Do Seem To Me To Recall Certain Images Of The Destruction Of Dresden During The War.

When I Make A Representation Of Something, This, Too, Is An Analogy To What Exists; I Make An Effort To Get A Grip On The Thing By Depicting It.

And Then The Work Bears A Strong Sense Of Leave-taking For Me Personally. It Ends The Work I Began In The 1960s (paintings From Black-and-white Photographs), With A Compressed Summation That Precludes Any Possible Continuation. And So It Is A Leave-taking From Thoughts And Feelings Of My Own On A Very Basic Level. Not That This Is A Deliberate Act, Of Course; It Is A Quasi-automatic Sequence Of Disintegration And Reformation Which I Can Perceive, As Always, Only In Retrospect.

If, While I'm Painting, I Distort Or Destroy A Motif, It Is Not A Planned Or Conscious Act, But Rather It Has A Different Justification: I See The Motif, The Way I Painted It, Is Somehow Ugly Or Unbearable. Then I Try To Follow My Feelings And Make It Attractive. And That Means A Process Of Painting, Changing Or Destroying - For However Long It Takes - Until I Think It Has Improved. And I Don't Demand An Explanation From Myself As To Why This Is So.