The painter's obsession with his subject is all that he needs to drive him to work.

My work is purely autobiographical... It is about myself and my surroundings.

I remember Francis Bacon would say that he felt he was giving art what he thought it previously lacked. With me, it's what Yeats called the fascination with what's difficult. I'm only trying to do what I can't do.

When I look at a body it gives me choice of what to put in a painting, what will suit me and what won't. There is a distinction between fact and truth. Truth has an element of revelation about it. If something is true, it does more than strike one as merely being so.

The aura given out by a person or object is as much a part of them as their flesh.

The painter must give a completely free rein to any feeling or sensations he may have and reject nothing to which he is naturally drawn.

I want paint to work as flesh... my portraits to be of the people, not like them. Not having a look of the sitter, being them ... As far as I am concerned the paint is the person. I want it to work for me just as flesh does.