All painting, no matter what you are painting, is abstract in that it's got to be organized.

Smoking calms me down. It's enjoyable. I don't want politicians deciding what is exciting in my life.

Drawing is rather like playing chess: your mind races ahead of the moves that you eventually make.

I avoid the public because the English public is too aggressive these days for me.

In the end nobody knows how it's done — how art is made. It can't be explained. Optical devices are just tools. Understanding a tool doesn't explain the magic of creation. Nothing can.

It's no good saying I wished I could go out more, because I can't. But I don't bother about it too much.

East Yorkshire, to the uninitiated, just looks like a lot of little hills. But it does have these marvelous valleys that were caused by glaciers, not rivers. So it is unusual.