Everything is autobiographical and everything is a portrait.

I paint people, not because of what they are like, not exactly in spite of what they are like, but how they happen to be.

I've always wanted to create drama in my pictures, which is why I paint people. It's people who have brought drama to pictures from the beginning. The simplest human gestures tell stories.

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.

Losing as much money as I can get hold of is an instant solution to my economic problems.

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.

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