The painting is always done very much with [the model's] co-operation. The problem with painting a nude, of course, is that it deepens the transaction. You can scrap a painting of someone's face and it imperils the sitter's self-esteem less than scrapping a painting of the whole naked body.

Full, saturated colours have an emotional significance I want to avoid.

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

The longer you look at an object, the more abstract it becomes, and, ironically, the more real.

The character of the artist doesn't enter into the nature of the art

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.

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