When I left the Royal College, I decided I would only make paintings that I would want to look at myself, that felt close to my life.

When I left the Royal College, I decided I would only make paintings that I would want to look at myself, that felt close to my life.

Sometimes, as I feel a door or an exit point in my work is closing, I'll try to create an opening so as not to stifle the creative process, which I see as a process that's never-ending.

There was a point in time where the thought of people even talking about me made me anxious. Physically.

When I was painting in art school - and I think many painters in the 1980s worked similarly - a finished painting would often be constructed from lots of other paintings underneath. Some of these individual layers of painting were better than others, but that was something that you would often only realise retrospectively.

I'm aware that success can overwhelm you. The perception of you can be elevated to such a status that it's not you any more.

The studio is a place where I can experiment before I'm prepared for an idea to become a body of work, or a new way of working, or a way of working that can sustain me over a period of time.