Norbert Schwontkowski (1949 - 2013)

'Most of my paintings come from a dream, which is never fixed. It is more like the feeling when you are travelling on a train without a destination, or in the early morning when you just wake, when you are still in between a dream and the thoughts of what you have to do for the day...Essentially, it comes from a moment when there is not so much control of your thoughts or what you could actually see. Your eyes are open and you think you can see whatever’s in front of you, but in fact there is something from this corner of your vision, which somehow melts together and becomes something you can’t identify whatsoever. I think this is the way poetry works, by allowing things to come together and bloom and become something else, something fresh and alive.' (N. Schwontkowski, quoted in 'Norbert Schwontkowski in conversation with Phong Bui', The Brooklyn Rail, December 2009).