It is not a torment to be an artist. It is a privilege.

Look at it this way - a totem pole is just a decorated tree. My work is a confessional.

Art is restoration: the idea is to repair the damages that are inflicted in life, to make something that is fragmented - which is what fear and anxiety do to a person - into something whole.

Don't get the green disease of envy. Don't be fooled by success and money. Don't let anything come between you and your work.

Sometimes it is necessary to make a confrontation-and I like that.

The colour blue - that is my colour - and the colour blue means you have left the drabness of day-to-day reality to be transported into - not a world of fantasy, it’s not a world of fantasy - but a world of freedom where you can say what you like and what you don’t like. This has been expressed forever by the colour blue, which is really sky blue.

My childhood has never lost its magic, it has never lost its mystery, and it has never lost its drama.