By painting colours and lines and forms seen in a quickened mood I was seeking to make this mood vibrate as a phonograph does. - Edvard Munch

And I live with the dead – my mother, my sister [Sophie], my grandfather, my father [who died in 1889, when Munch was in France].. .Every day is the same – my friends have stopped coming – their laughter disturbs me, tortures me.. ..my daily walk round the old castle becomes shorter and shorter, it tires me more and more to take walks. The fire in the fireplace is my only friend – the time I spend sitting in front of the fireplace gets longer and longer.. ..at its worst I lean my head against the fireplace overwhelmed by the sudden urge – Kill yourself and then it’s all over. Why live? I light the candle – my huge shadow springs across half the wall, clear up to the ceiling and in the mirror over the fireplace I see the face of my own ghost.

From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them and that is eternity.

What is art really? The outcome of dissatisfaction with life, the point of impact for the creative force, the continual movement of life.. ..in my art I attempt to explain life and its meaning to myself.