“No image exists at the beginning. In my view, a painting does not start with a specific object, idea, form, content, memory, or imagination. Sometimes I work closer to the ‘form’, sometimes closer to the ‘content’. It is the state of tension between all these things that interests me. This tension can lie in something seemingly neutral, like a shoe or jacket, as a hidden power beneath the surface. I try to make works in which that tension connects with my own feelings – the painting is the interface between the two. The painting on the canvas engages with me in the same way that I engage with the painting.”

“I start with an idea, either from a small sketch or an earlier painting, which I want to take further. Sometimes the painting comes together very quickly and I don’t have to make any changes at all; sometimes it takes months until it is finished. In that case, I wipe off the wet paint and change the form, often purposefully, although the unexpected can happen, which I have to recognize and then continue with. Or I make the cathartic decision to overpaint the entire canvas, continuing to work by destroying. This allows the painting to attain a meaning of its own. If I tried to force those moments where something happens by chance, the whole thing would look contrived. Intellect and will can make the painting illustrative. So there is always a new challenge. Nuance and depth emerge casually, on the way to something else"

“The figurative and the abstract do not have to be mutually exclusive. I need both, they feed each other. The abstract is very important for me because it allows me to paint intuitively, without the rules dictated by objects from reality. I have to be able to let go when I paint. When I have not painted for a few days, pressure mounts and images are formed in front of my inner eye and I feel a great desire to paint. At the same time, I need rules to paint, nothing is worse than ‘anything goes’. As a result, there is often a concentration on one object. This one object is de-socialized – it is not integrated into a perspective,  a landscape, or an interior.“

-Raphaela Simon