And then I went round the corner and there's a Van Gogh portrait, and you just think, well, this is another level. A higher level, actually. I love the Sargent, but it's not the level of Van Gogh.

The high-definition picture is still a perspective picture. That's the real problem, the perspective picture.

I've always said that the only thing a photograph is good at capturing faithfully is another flat surface.

It's all one to me: opera, painting, drawing, faxes.

The history of photography needs clearing out. It needs something else now. Because photography always acknowledged there were cameras before photography.

I have always believed that art should be a deep pleasure...ther e is always, everywhere, an enormous amount of suffering. But I believe my duty as an artist is to overcome and alleviate the sterility of despair...New ways of seeing mean new ways of feeling... I do believe that painting can change the world.

I had always planned to make a large painting of the early spring, when the first leaves are at the bottom of the trees, and they seem to float in space in a wonderful way. But the arrival of spring can't be done in one picture.