Erich Engelbrecht (1928–2011) called his pictures »introspective«. He remarks on this: »The introspective image inspects the arena of the soul, the field of operation of archetypes, which constitute the fundamental pattern of our behaviour.«

He had no plan or idea for an artwork, merely an empty sheet of paper or canvas in front of him; he made himself receptive, waited, and allowed himself to be guided by the images, a process that he experienced very much as an ordeal and even as a threat to his existence. His wife Waltraud Engelbrecht would then try to »read« these images and to derive a coherence of meaning from correspondences of form and colour.