I thought the objects we value least because they were ubiquitous were actually the most extraordinary.

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.

I wanted to make new works of very contemporary objects, which I thought was interesting because many of them are manufactured in China, but these objects are universal, they go across all languages, all cultures.

The complexity of the language of images is disguised by the ease and rapidity with which we read them. I've tried to make work that is as transparent and simple as possible. No matter how much I strip away the result is always more complex to me than I expect.

I do think I paid a price as an artist, and I am trying to make up for it now - I work six days a week in the studio, and I've never been happier.

When I look at the objects that I draw, it seems to me so obvious about the contemporary world - these are our world.

I came to painting through sculpture, to images through objects. I think that images sit in the middle, somewhere between objects and words.