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The art world can be very intimidating because it's just so vast. You talk to people who are really clued in to all the young artists and coming into it you're never going to be able to catch up immediately, even though there's pressure to.

I started making art with art therapy. It's what I know how to do. I got a lot of criticism for that when I was in school. But I think it works for me.

Every now and then, I feel terribly uncomfortable with what I'm working on, and then I think maybe I am an artist. I'm not very articulate about it, but I do know that you have to follow your gut.

Most people respond to my paintings quite generously, but there have been cases where I think people - a few critics in particular - were actually moved by the work but were disturbed by the feelings it evoked, so they attacked it. Some people find the realm of my work quite uncomfortable.

One often forgets that even if art is a very successful field in contemporary culture, there are still a lot of people alienated by it. Even if people don't fully understand where my work is coming from, at least there's somebody who looks kind of sane standing in front of you and politely engaging with you. People react.

My dark little secret is that I don't actually believe many people in the art world have much feeling for art.

I'm still trying to discover my position on my own artwork and hopefully at this exhibition someone will come and tell me. I'm open to listening to criticism.

But, when I had this feeling and started painting sacred art, as I had this feeling to do, then it come to me: my problem is I'll get a lot of criticism and another problem is my work's not good enough to sell.

Criticism really used to hurt me. Most of these critics are usually frustrated artists, and they criticise other people's art because they can't do it themselves. It's a really disgusting job. They must feel horrible inside.