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Of course, museums and galleries and art spaces will continue to ground the art world. But certainly the public - as well as artists - also benefit when art is encountered in other everyday situations.

I have to say that I reject somewhat the distinction between something called art and something called public art. I think all art demands and desires to be seen.

In my regular life, I am very involved in commissions for cities and sometimes countries. And I think of public art as a team sport. The outcome is only possible with the interaction of all the players.

The public needs art - and it is the responsibility of a 'self-proclaimed artist' to realize that the public needs art, and not to make bourgeois art for a few and ignore the masses.

People who put my paintings on their walls are putting their values on their walls: faith, family, home, a simpler way of living, the beauty of nature, quiet, tranquillity, peace, joy, hope. They beckon you into this world that provides an alternative to your nightly news broadcast.

So many paintings have hidden meanings or need wall texts, but my work is not in that category.

As Mayor, I will fully support my Arts Commission and its professional selection committees so that they can commission a full range of public art that is daring and, when appropriate, daringly traditional.

When I paint, I seriously consider the public presence of a person - the surface facade. I am less concerned with how people look when they wake up or how they act at home. A person's public presence reflects his own efforts at image development.

It's too simplistic to advance the notion of the autonomy of art as a reason for turning away from the public. You can have autonomy and simultaneously have connections with the social and political world.