I've taken away everything I could think of, and yet what remains is enough. These days many more people come to my work, and once they see my work they will always recognize it.

The internet has extended the possibility of making art to more people, and particularly of enabling it to be seen by others. I am sure the internet is having a profound impact on art, particularly those who have grown up with it, but making good art will remain as difficult (and as easy) as it ever was. Having a lasting impact may become more not less difficult.

Today, in British education, we don't have that kind of freedom. Now there are many regulations, many rules, and bureaucracies in the education system. So, it doesn't have the flexibility that it had in the '60s, '70s, '80s.

In Britain the power of authority was weakened. There was much more individual freedom and there was great academic freedom.

Usually when I go to the Summer Exhibition, I think every room is too much the same, and I loose my capacity to look at individual works.

The first exhibition that I used bright colours in painting the room was at a gallery in Paris, and there were seven rooms in the gallery. It was very nice gallery, not very big rooms, around the courtyard, it was a very French space. So I painted each room in different colour. When people came to the exhibition, I saw they came with a smile. Everybody smiles - this is something I never saw in my work before.

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