I've no doubt that those photographs i took will make people look at everything in a more interesting way - the little tear on one piece of paper, the shadow on another. But good painting has always done that - made you see things. And the most ordinary can be the most extraordinary.

I'm a bit claustrophobic, I don't like crowds, I live by the sea - that's what I see when I come out of my house in Bridlington.

As for the world of fashion and celebrity, I have the usual interest in the human comedy, but the problems of depiction absorb me more.

On the 31st of October 2011 year, I had a mini-stroke. I couldn't finish my sentences. So I went to the doctor. It was a tiny one. The speech came back in a month or so. I did notice I could draw even better, I felt. I was concentrating more. And I wasn't talking much, but I was drawing. I said, "Well, I don't have to talk much."

I think we seem to remember things in still pictures. I never gave up on painting. When they said painting was dead, I just thought, Well, that's all about photography, and photography's not that interesting, and it's changing anyway.

The photograph isn't good enough. It's not real enough.

Once you start painting, you could of course get lost. I mean you get out of yourself, you don't know whether you're thinking, you just act actually sometimes.