"There are two cities on the Earth, where I feel at ease and free — Paris and St. Petersburg, or rather, St. Petersburg, my hometown, where my family has lived since the middle of the 19th century, and Paris, the city that I visited 30 years ago for the first time, and that has become familiar and close to me. It so happened that I basically visit Paris in autumn or spring, Parisian autumn resembles a rainy St. Petersburg August, Parisian spring — a rainy St. Petersburg June. I really like to draw rain, blurred outlines of houses, their reflections in the mirrors of sidewalks, flickering reflections of multicoloured lights that revive the grey-pearl landscape, silhouettes of pipes, blackening wet tree trunks, foliage dissolved in a grey-asphalt sky. It is in such weather that the boundaries are erased not only between objects but also between cities — you do not always immediately realize where to rush in the morning — to the banks of the Seine or the banks of the Neva."