I'm very influenced by a lot of things, but my chief influence is my friends and what I see and what I feel and my own experiences and memory.

Usually people just do their own work. But I want to deal with the place and what it means to show in a mental hospital.

I was recently interviewed for radio in relation to the "Thanksgiving" show [2001] at the Saatchi gallery that I was part of. The interviewer said that people in London were very disturbed that I showed a picture of myself battered ("Nan One Month after Being Battered", 1984) and they thought that I set it up. I was accused of deliberately putting on a wig for that particular picture.

I start to paint my walls. And I'm heavily influenced by films.

I'm very flattered when people I respect like my work. It's like a dream of a little kid when somebody I idolised likes my work.

If I want to take a picture, I take it no matter what.

When I started photographing my boyfriend of years ago, Brian, I realised I had no right to photograph other people having sex if I wasn't prepared to take them of myself too