I think from an artist's point of view, everything in art, in fact everything in the world is available as material.

When I was a very young student I loved and admired the work of Sam Beckett, who is famously pessimistic, and whose writing is an extraordinary examination of emptiness. I wanted to be like Beckett. I don't have the same attitude toward the world, I'm naturally optimistic, and so of course I could never be like Beckett. You can't force yourself to become like someone you admire.

I have been using the computer as a work aid since the mid-90's. It is extraordinarily well suited to how I think and work and has transformed my practice. Nearly everything I have done in the past 15 years would have been impossible without it. I use the computer for drawing, composing and colour planning everything, from postage stamps to paintings to architectural-scale installations.

In a sense [Joseph] Albers was an authoritarian teacher. He had rules about most things and very definite ideas.

There is no doubt when one comes from the West to China one understands pop art as having originally developed as part of Western tradition. There is a historical development, in which things find resonance in different places.

The art world, of all worlds, has room for everyone.

I greatly admired him as a teacher I didn't teach the same way as Josef Albers at all.