I never decided to become an art forger. I was aware of my talent at an early age, and I used it foolishly. This developed over the years. In my heart, I don't see myself as a criminal.
The trick is to paint a picture that doesn't exist, and yet that fits perfectly into an artist's body of work.
For the cynic, art is defined through money. That, of course, is a very sad statement. But an artist is someone who does creative things.
Every philharmonic orchestra merely interprets the composer. My goal was to create new music by that composer. In doing so, I wanted to find the painter's creative center and become familiar with it, so that I could see through his eyes how his paintings came about and, of course, see the new picture I was painting through his eyes - before I even painted it.
I can paint anything. Leonardo? Of course. But why? You couldn't sell it.
One is a criminal to some people and an artist to others. I can understand that. In a legal sense, I am a convicted criminal.
Most forgers are caught because they tell the wrong person about what they do.
In a legal sense, I am a convicted criminal.
The interesting thing is that in everyday life, I fail to see the most ordinary things. I often stumble and sometimes I even fall over. But when I draw or look at a painting, I go into a sort of overdrive and just see things differently than other people.
I think that the most important requirement is to capture the essence of a piece of art. You look at it, essentially absorb it, and you have to be able to understand it visually without having to think about how it was done. I was already able to do that as a child.
Fame never interested me. I could have exhibited more of my own works in the 1970s, but I didn't want to. It's sort of like being a child. When you're finished with school, you have only one thing on your mind: to get out and experience life. Did I want to spend all my time working on a painting? No, I wanted to have fun, travel, meet women and live life.
I wouldn't be ashamed to sell my own art for a lot of money.
I went to the flea market in the morning and charged tourists money to take pictures of me. I looked pretty wild, with hair down to my waist, Indian robes, a floor-length fur coat. There must be lots of photos of me out there.
You can't paint pictures of love. You can only imagine them. So I suppose I don't need a painting by another artist. I have enough of my own.
Sometimes I smoked opium. And I also took LSD - for a while, quite a lot of LSD, in fact. But I never had any bad experiences. I stopped in 1985. I'd had enough, and I don't miss it, either.
No one ever ordered anything from me. I painted because I wanted to.
Did I want to spend all my time working on a painting? No, I wanted to have fun, travel, meet women and live life.
I only painted when I felt like it and needed money. But it never really became a professional thing, even though the dealers would have liked that.
I lived on a houseboat in Amsterdam for a year. It was intense, and it's possible that I even had a few blackouts.
I once went to a demonstration in Aachen against fare increases on public transport. A police officer pulled out a bunch of my hair, and there were a lot of violent beatings. That's when I thought to myself: You'd better leave it alone.
