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.

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

Everything is autobiographical and everything is a portrait.

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

Painting is sometimes like those recipes where you do all manner of elaborate things to a duck, and then end up putting it on one side and only using the skin.

I don't want any colour to be noticeable... I don't want it to operate in the modernist sense as colour, something independent... Full, saturated colours have an emotional significance I want to avoid.

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.