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I have always been fascinated by paleontology and prehistoric people, and I've always thought that one of the most intriguing moments in human history was the birth of artistic imagination. I always loved those cave paintings.

Visual storytelling of one kind or another has been around since cavemen were drawing on the walls.

I felt that in time simple stone tools would be found in early Pleistocene in England.

The earliest paintings I loved were always the most non-referential paintings you can imagine, by painters such as Mondrian. I was thrilled by them because they didn't refer to anything else. They stood alone, and they were just charged magic objects that did not get their strength from being connected to anything else.

There is tragic evidence to show that the paintings at the French prehistoric art sites are deteriorating.

France has lived a long time - eight or nine centuries - and yet art in France, too, was derivative up until the 19th Century.

The frame of the cave leads to the frame of man.

I think it's natural for an artist to explore as they evolve.

You know I was curious - I was interested in all kinds of mystery or deeper meanings in the paintings because I myself have not analyzed why they have turned out like this or like that.

When I was in high school and college, I thought everybody could think in pictures. And my first inkling to my thinking was even different was when I was in college and I read an article about, you know, some scientist said that the caveman could not have designed tools until they had language.