Feudal Europe is over, but it found its way into film culture. It found its way into postmodern painting culture, and we're all here talking about it today. It still lives. I don't believe in ghosts, but these are contemporary ghosts.

I'm fully capable of multitasking certain conceptual concerns within the work.

I think didactic art is boring. I mean, I love it in terms of, like, some of the historical precedents that I've learned from. You needed that. We needed those building blocks in terms of - you know, when I look at a great Barbara Kruger, for example, and you're thinking about, you know, the woman's position in society - you know, she found a way of making it beautiful, but at the same time it's very sort of preachy, you know what I mean?

What's interesting about my project recently is that I'm going out into broader global spaces but then isolating at the same time - sort of pushing out but then pulling in.

Can I - do I have to be obsessed with it and proceed from that? Not always. But when I'm on top of my game, I definitely think about the way that the world sees me and the way that the world thinks about painting. You must.

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.

We have a lot of sort of received historical ways of viewing portraiture. And I suppose in some way I'm sort of questioning that by toying with the rules of the game.