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.

The faces people make when they are photographed and the face they have when you draw them are very different.

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.

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.

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.

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