"I believe that in true art, both the figurative and abstract aspect must be present. They com­ple­ment each other. Let’s ta­ke a clichéd subject li­ke the "Madonna with child." It has been used thou­sands of times, but on­ly one Ma­don­na touch­es our heart, the rest of them do not. Why? I think it hap­pens be­cau­se that one Ma­don­na affects us in an abstract way. In other words, when we look at that Madonna, we ex­pe­rien­ce something that we can’t even ex­plain exact­­ly. In clas­si­cal pain­t­ing, both as­pects are in­ter­wo­ven. In mo­dern painting only one as­pect is em­pha­si­zed…"

"Occasionally, something extra­or­di­na­ry reveals it­self to you. You un­der­stand suddenly that you can make it possible for others to see it too. At first you think: pro­­bab­­ly everybody can see that. But after­wards you come to un­der­stand: no, you alone have seen it, no­­bo­­dy else has even no­ti­ced it. At that point you go to work, be­cause you want others to be able to see it. It happens that the reac­tion to your work can be very good – then you’ve attained your goal. And it happens that peop­le walk by your pic­tu­res and don’t see any­thing. One thing is clear: you must never over­look the mo­ments when you discover some­­thing won­der­­ful. They are pre­­cious, be­cause today you can see the beau­ty, and next week, or even fi­ve mi­nu­tes la­ter, it has di­sap­pear­ed forever."

"About colors I’ll say this: every place on earth evokes in me a different color scheme, depending on the atmosphere and the human relationships. In Odessa, for example, I have the impression that the sky is turquoise. In Tbilisi – ultra-marine. If we are talking about color in Berlin, I feel that it needs to be a mixture of Berlin azure, red earth and something grey."