I'm really in the business of unifying these two tendencies that have been at odds in our human history for a very long time: the logical and the romantic.

I am a very spiritual person: I could say a Catholic with a strong underpinning of Zen.

My childhood was extremely unhappy. That's not to say that my parents didn't love me. But it was traumatic, and of course, art doesn't come out of rosy gardens. It comes out of damage.

I work on stretched linen canvas, sized so that the surface already has a sense of tension when I begin. It is a very rich and reactive surface. I begin by drawing on the canvas with a kind of loose line, very simply and freely. I paint very thinly, which allows me to change the drawing if I want to.

Imagine a world without art: it's George Orwell's nightmare!