I am now mainly painting faces and landscapes; I am obsessed day and night by the vision of faces and colours. And the spiritual vision is my mystica… - Alexej von Jawlensky

This acquaintance [with Marianne Werefkin ] would change my life. I became a friend of hers, of this clever woman gifted with genius.

My friends, the apples that I love for their delightful red, yellow, mauve and green clothing cease to be apples for me when I see them against this or that background, in such or such surroundings.. .And they resound in my sight like a music, reproducing this or that mood of my soul, this or that fleeting contact with the soul of things.. .To reproduce the things which exist without being, to reveal them to other people, by passing them through my sympathetic understanding, by revealing them in the passion I feel for hem, that is the goal of my artistic existence. To me apples, trees, human faces are not more than hints as to what else I should seen in them: the life of colour, comprehended by a passionate lover.

My paintings [c. 1907] were aglow with colors and so my soul was contended with them.