One is a criminal to some people and an artist to others. I can understand that. In a legal sense, I am a convicted criminal.

Fame never interested me. I could have exhibited more of my own works in the 1970s, but I didn't want to. It's sort of like being a child. When you're finished with school, you have only one thing on your mind: to get out and experience life. Did I want to spend all my time working on a painting? No, I wanted to have fun, travel, meet women and live life.

You can't paint pictures of love. You can only imagine them. So I suppose I don't need a painting by another artist. I have enough of my own.

One is a criminal to some people and an artist to others. I can understand that. In a legal sense, I am a convicted criminal.

I only painted when I felt like it and needed money. But it never really became a professional thing, even though the dealers would have liked that.

Sometimes I smoked opium. And I also took LSD - for a while, quite a lot of LSD, in fact. But I never had any bad experiences. I stopped in 1985. I'd had enough, and I don't miss it, either.

I think that the most important requirement is to capture the essence of a piece of art. You look at it, essentially absorb it, and you have to be able to understand it visually without having to think about how it was done. I was already able to do that as a child.