I dont think you can lightly paint a picture. Its an activity I take very seriously.

In England, it's thought to be morally suspect to worry about what your surroundings look like.

I don't really have a historical overview of my work at all. I'm not an art historian. I don't see that there's this period and that period.

I find old copies of National Gallery catalogues, which are written in the dryest possible prose, infinitely soothing.

I want my pictures to be things. I want them to be made up of marks that are physically and individually self-sufficient.

Passion lies between one mark and the next, and also within all of them.

I'm vulnerable to criticism. Any artist is, because you work alone in your studio and, until recently, critics were the only way you'd get any feedback.