Originality Is Merely An Illusion.

Science And Art Sometimes Can Touch One Another, Like Two Pieces Of The Jigsaw Puzzle Which Is Our Human Life, And That Contact May Be Made Across The Boderline Between The Two Respective Domains.

Although I Am Even Now Still A Layman In The Area Of Mathematics, And Although I Lack Theoretical Knowledge, The Mathematicians, And In Particular The Crystallographers, Have Had Considerable Influence On My Work Of The Last Twenty Years. The Laws Of The Phenomena Around Us--order, Regularity, Cyclical Repetition, And Renewals--have Assumed Greater And Greater Importance For Me. The Awareness Of Their Presence Gives Me Peace And Provides Me With Support. I Try In My Prints To Testify That We Live In A Beautiful And Orderly World, And Not In A Formless Chaos, As It Sometimes Seems.

By Keenly Confronting The Enigmas That Surround Us, And By Considering And Analyzing The Observations That I Had Made, I Ended Up In The Domain Of Mathematics. Although I Am Absolutely Without Training In The Exact Sciences, I Often Seem To Have More In Common With Mathematicians Than With My Fellow Artists.

A Woman Once Rang Me Up And Said, 'mr. Escher, I Am Absolutely Crazy About Your Work. In Your Print -reptiles- You Have Given Such A Striking Illustration Of Reincarnation.' I Replied, 'madam, If That's The Way You See It, So Be It.'

I Am Always Wandering Around In Enigmas. There Are Young People Who Constantly Come To Tell Me: You, Too, Are Making Op Art. I Haven't The Slightest Idea What That Is, Op Art. I've Been Doing This Work For Thirty Years Now.