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

Usually people start with painting and then go on to make installations; my painting came from installation.

I am personally happy for artists to make as much money as they can while they can to carry them through the times when they can't.

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.

There was something really wonderful about being able to feel confident about doing my first exhibition in China, that people would have no trouble recognising the images and understanding my work. I also have a lot of freedom in the way I use colour, and I think that kind of freedom in colour is also understandable in every culture.

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

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.