I think for a lot of artists, if you're lucky enough to have a kind of career, especially toward the end, you start to think about what the whole ensemble looks like. It's the whole that counts. The parts are given, but you don't know how the whole thing's going to look when it's all put together.

Scarlatti [Kirkpatrick] started writing sonatas when he was 66 and the idea that he ran off 500 or so after he was 66 was just too much for me to resist. It's just great.

I don't like to say I have given my life to art. I prefer to say art has given me my life.

But, after all, the aim of art is to create space - space that is not compromised by decoration or illustration, space within which the subjects of painting can live.

The aim of art is to create space.

A sculpture is just a painting cut out and stood up somewhere.

I want to make exalted art. A successful image has pictorial lift. I am looking for whatever is up there