It's important for me to give each thing the possibility to speak and also to allow artworks speak to each other.

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.

When I was in Wuhan, I went to the art school, which was one of the most important art schools in China, an enormous art school. One of the things that I saw is that the schools are very big and there are so many students. It is very difficult to me to teach creative activity to great numbers of people, because I think you need personal contact with students, you need to speak individually, you need individual contact between teachers and students, you need continuity. To me this is a problem in mass education in every society now.

The Royal Academy Summer Exhibition is very difficult to hang because it is so large and the quality is very varied. There are 1,200 works, an almost impossible number, some are interesting and some are not.

I had my exhibition of paintings first in Shanghai, and then recently in Wuhan. Wuhan particularly interested me, because I am 1/8 Chinese.

When I was teaching I often said to students that you are trying to be too creative, don't be too creative, because there is so much already in what you are making, you don't need to do very much. You just need to do a little bit, and that is a lot.

Often people do not properly value things that they are good at naturally because they find them too easy. That is very problematic.