I'm inspired heavily by film influences - David Lynch's Blue Velvet, Federico Fellini, Alfred Hitchcock, Pedro Almodóvar, and what I see in the cinema - so there is a linking, an interweaving between memory, cinema and contemporary life, which the women in my pictures encapsulate.

I suppose I like to set myself projects that are tight, focused, and then challenge myself with how broad I can go within that limited aspect. I think to Helmut Newton and film director, Federico Fellini - the added level of eroticism, the arousing message - and how it was possible for them to keep their signatures over so many years.

I'm always working in this universe - whether picturing hamburger joints, Virgin Marys, domestic scenes - using these "vacant-faced" women as a medium to question universal truths.

The work is never finished because women forever will be eternally mysterious to me - and I will always find that point where people are lost in thought, observed but lacking self-consciousness, the most beautiful.

I'll always remember Jean Paul Gaultier, who did a project based on Madonnas, remarking on the images, "Yours are much better." Gaultier is really smart, so it's good getting a compliment from him!

It's amazing how if you turn up at a studio without an idea, a picture will take itself from momentum, and you quickly can lose control.

Having a book is actually like a great master - helping to build a universe and unify work - especially in my pictures where there is such a strong signature, yet with a set of rigorous rules to it.