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

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.

A collection makes its own demands. Many artists have been collectors. I think of it rather as an illness. I felt it was using up too much energy.

Eventually, a collection ceases to be a personal indulgence and assumes its own identity. In fact, it becomes a thing in its own right - rather like Frankenstein's monster.

A painting is finished when the subject comes back, when what has caused the painting to be made comes back as an object.

I don't look at the work of my contemporaries very much; I tend to look at pictures by dead artists. It's much easier to get near their paintings.

You keep on balancing and balancing and balancing until the picture wins, because then the subject's turned into the picture.