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Picabia is a very old painter who some people try to connect me to, but I refuse such comparisons very well.

I will always find even the worst paintings that attempt some kind of representation better than the best invented paintings.

You know, the way art history is taught, often there's nothing that tells you why the painting is great. The description of a lousy painting and the description of a great painting will very much sound the same.

There are times when I prefer a cerebral moment with an artist, and I'll just enjoy the wit of a Picabia or a Duchamp. It amuses me that they thought that what they did would be a good way of making art.

Sometimes people only see horrible, terrible things in my paintings.

My early paintings weren't that good - I was very influenced by Francis Bacon. But there was a kind of intensity there. And however influenced they may have been by other people, even my earliest paintings were recognisably my own.

Good painting is like good cooking; it can be tasted, but not explained.

Good painting is the kind that looks like sculpture.

Painters aren't expected to paint bleak pictures, are they?