When I started teaching in the late 60s, in a time of student revolutions and changes, they changed in question of society and authority.

It's important for me to give each thing the possibility to speak and also to allow artworks speak to each other.

You can't force yourself to be something you are not.

I had been doing wall drawings, but they were always black and white. Then in 1993 I painted all the walls of a room to make an installation and as soon as I saw the colour on the walls, it changed my whole life.

'Understanding' art is like having a sense of humour - if you don't have one, no amount of explanation is going to make you laugh.

In the studio, it took me a long time to work out how to make paintings that had the intensity that I was able to create by painting whole rooms. There is a very limited number of colours but there are many variations. I decided to use the purest palette that I could.

If you try to copy something exactly you won't get it correct, because you don't share the same tradition and context.