I don't think meeting people that I've done pictures of spoils it at all because I like the really human sides of people. To meet them and see that they're complicated and weird or shy or any of those things sort of makes it even better - to know that they can rise above that and make something great.

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

That's what it's all about - making art is making something live forever. Human beings especially - we can't hold on to them in any way. Painting and art is a way of holding onto things and making things go on through time.

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.

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

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.

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.