Pictures are spiritual beings. The soul of the painter lives within them. - Emil Nolde

Nobody had made the same full use of the properties of acids and metal in this way before. Having drown on the copper-plate and left areas of it bare, I laid it in the bath of acid and achieved effects that astonished even me, full of subtle nuances.

If I were tied to the letter of the Scriptures and rigid dogma, I believe I could not have painted these profoundly felt paintings about the Eucharist and the 'Pentecost' [religious paintings, he made c. 1909-11) I had to be artistically free - not have God before me. like a steely Assyrian ruler, but God in me, hot and holy like Christ's love.

It was in mid-summer . The colors of the flowers attracted me irresistibly and almost sudden I was painting. My first small gardens paintings were born.