Theres something in music that fascinates me - how it communicates emotion so immediately. Thats something I wanted in my paintings.

Romanticism is not just about being in a fixed state of endless beauty, because you can't live like that or live on that, that's what I've learnt.

To paint well, I need to be enraptured by my subjects.

I think everybody can be beautiful. Anybody can have beauty. It's about how you look at the world, in a way, and how you treat yourself.

You really need faith in yourself to make art and to stand up for what you believe in.

Marie Antoinette: The Portrait of an Average Woman was one of those books I read in my mid-twenties that was life-changing. I think I had a very black-and-white view of Marie Antoinette before, but in reading that book, I developed a lot of empathy for her. She was just caught up in history. There was no place for a woman to do anything at that time anyway.

I lived in London for a time in the '90s and I love it here. You know, I just go and see shows and have great dinners and walk around.