The art world has become so insular. The rules have become so autodidactic that, in a sense, they lose track of what people have any interest in thinking about, talking about or even looking at.

Even the hubris or the desire to go out into the world and find patterns that reflect back to yourself is so Lacanian and, like, mirrored, so as to be ridiculous. But there are very fixed sets of expectations that the world has about this work.

I think what we should concentrate on is what it feels like to be a working artist in the day to day. One doesn't imagine what comes down the line.

You have to bring books to explain your work.

Status and class and social anxiety and perhaps social code are all released when you look at paintings of powerful individuals from the past.

My studio practice is a - I suppose a bit more like [Thomas] Gainsborough or [Peter Paul] Rubens in the sense that any artist who wants to create a grand narrative on a grand scale has to sort of parse out some of the smaller aspects of painting or the more mundane aspects of painting to others.

[My twin brother] he was the star artist of the family as we - as we were growing up. He eventually lost interest and went more towards literature and then medicine and then business and so on. But for me it became something that I did well. And it felt great being able to make something look like something.