"I believe that any art of quality is rooted in a spiritual source; it is universal. I have experienced it as a form of trance – or pure connected creativity – both in painting and in music. Rumi is a master of conveying this source, but Rothko and Pollock give me the same feeling in a different language. So, yes there are relationships.

Understanding the Big Question, however, is a very personal journey and the ability to render it visually does not necessarily come from ever increasing intellectual knowledge or methodical contemplation. I am not a 'spiritual artist' in the sense that I consciously recycle Persian cultural icons with metaphysical meanings, but I do believe that the act of creation must have this natural flow which resolves in a miraculous moment where human life connects with a state beyond human reason. Pollock understood that and so did Rumi" 

- Reza Derakhshani