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

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 was invited to go to Wuhan, I didn't know anything about it, so I looked up the Wikipedia about Wuhan. I discovered that part of Wuhan used to be Hankou, and then I realised that my great grandmother came from Hankou. My grandmother and father were both born in Hankou. Of all the places in China, it is the most amazing place to have asked for my exhibition. I needed to go back where my family comes from!

I decided I should use the most obvious colours - the basic colours with simple names: red, purple, yellow, pink. I don't distort the objects, I don't change the objects, I draw them exactly as they are. I do the opposite with the colours.

Sometimes we look at a work of art and we immediately think that it is German art, but with some we don't, it's not so obvious.

In my early work I didn't use much colour. I had no confidence about how I could do this.

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