Real Paradise is not an earthly and visible one; it is not in any place but in ourself, and it is quickened and vivified by the powers of the soul and the inpouring of the spirit.

St. Ambrose

[The moment when the idea for a picture turns into something definite] is a give-and-take between an idea, what one might call “text”, and what is recorded using the medium as “subtext”. I have to ask myself what I expect from painting: should it be subservient to my ideas or a queen that I have to serve? The text, which I regard as a private matter, must be able to stand being dragged diagonally across the canvas. If it loses something along the way, so much the better, since it then gains something that it may have urgently needed: sensuality and a truth that is rooted in non-verbal space.

Neo Rausch, as quoted in “You won’t find an ‘Untitled’ among my works,” The Art Newspaper, 19 May 2011