I am a serious artist in my own right, in the sense that I've spent my entire life being an artist and trying to be an artist and making work.

The camera is an eye that sees and records the lives of filthy people. Its pictures are hung in museums and published in thick books that future generations can see how horrible life was.

Making drawings with text in the first place, it really was born of a desire to be economic, and to do things as simply as possible, and to do as much as I could by the most economic means.

I guess I just always want to surprise myself and say something that I'm not really quite sure where it came from, and it sort of makes sense and has a kind of profundity to it. Sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't.

I'm definitely not an outsider artist. I'm very much an insider artist. I get written about in art magazines, and I'm not, like, in a mental institution. I'm a regular guy who went to art school.

I never sat down and decided to make work about life and death. It just all comes out of my head like water pouring out of a jug.

Sometimes commercial galleries ask for particular work to sell, but I try not to be bossed around by them. I didn't become an artist to get bossed around.