On the iPhone I tended to draw with my thumb. Whereas the moment I got to the iPad, I found myself using every finger.

I stay up nights and fiddle with my opera designs. It's a bit obsessive. That's why I can't do it all the time.

It sometimes takes a foreigner to come and see a place and paint it. I remember someone saying they had never really noticed the palm trees here until I painted them.

Tragedy is a literary concept.

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.

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."

Yes, I did, I mean I painted er, in a kind of abstract expressionist way, because of course that was exciting.