Often I think changes within my work have been seen as sudden changes or sharp changes, but for me they're not that sudden. They have been there in the studio, but not so much in public.

The studio is a laboratory, not a factory. An exhibition is the result of your experiments, but the process is never-ending. So an exhibition is not a conclusion.

There's a magic that comes from playing entirely to who you are. I've got my specialist subject - in the Mastermind sense - and I wouldn't change it, or who I am.

In the end, it doesn't really matter what you paint. It's all just a routine to connect yourself finally with other people.

There was a point in time where the thought of people even talking about me made me anxious. Physically.

The studio is a place where I can experiment before I'm prepared for an idea to become a body of work, or a new way of working, or a way of working that can sustain me over a period of time.

When I left the Royal College, I decided I would only make paintings that I would want to look at myself, that felt close to my life.

Sometimes, as I feel a door or an exit point in my work is closing, I'll try to create an opening so as not to stifle the creative process, which I see as a process that's never-ending.

I'm aware that success can overwhelm you. The perception of you can be elevated to such a status that it's not you any more.

Last will never be more important than commitment. Commitment stacks the odds of a successful relationship in my favor.

Our ignorance of the meaning of the existence of one or another creation does not mean they are meaningless

Men at some time are masters of their fates.

Even if you feed the cow cocoa you will not get chocolate.

He was gone, and she was broken hearted, that was all that mattered.

Better a pink bottom than a black soul.

When Cromwell instructed his portraitist to paint him 'warts and all', he meant both halves of that equation. To teach the warts alone is morbid and unhealthy.

Envy has been, is, and shall be, the destruction of many. What is there, that Envy hath not defamed, or Malice left undefiled? Truly, no good thing.

I have never had to face anything that could overwhelm the native optimism and stubborn perseverance I was blessed with.

Every time I find a girl who can cook like my mother - she looks like my father