I did not want windows, only skylights. I chose my painting wall as it has the best morning light.

A lot of young painters love to incorporate celebrity. One idea of being a painter is to use what's happening at the time. Velázquez was painting of his time. And so was Rembrandt. And Francis Bacon was painting his time in London. He was a real mover, but he saw the insect in the rose. But yes, when I do a painting, I want to take the "I did this" out of it. That's why I started using chance, like the markings on the wood. I never wanted to compose.

Everything that I saw became something to be made, and it had to be exactly as it was, with nothing added. It was a new freedom: there was no longer the need to compose. The subject was there already made, and I could take from everything. It all belonged to me: a glass roof of a factory, with its broken and patched panels, lines on a road map, a corner of a Braque painting, paper fragments in the street. It was all the same: anything goes.

The paintings to me are always canvas, sculpture has always been metal, though I have made sculpture in wood also.

I believe people have to be open to what's happening when they're alive.

All my paintings are usually done in drawing form, very small. I make notations in drawings first, and then I make a collage for color. But drawing is always my notation.

Shading is more like copying. And certainly I do copy, but I'm making drawings, and I'm not trying to make them with the shading.