After finishing the work I start rearranging the parts again and eventually start to work with themes - images and thoughts and things.

You need to know a lot about what's going on, but when it comes to making the work, I take almost an anti-intellectual stance. You've got to be stupid enough, in some ways, to plunge into something that you have no idea what it's about. If you know what you're going to do before you do it, you just end up illustrating an idea.

After finishing the work I start rearranging the parts again and eventually start to work with themes - images and thoughts and things.

Making a painting is like having sex for a month or something. Then I go through this period of elation at finishing the work. Then you drop off - you know, 'post-coital man is sad,' as the old saying goes.