I fell through a crack for years. Historically, I am a nothing because I fit in no category. I can only be me.
A young woman has young claws, well sharpened. If she has character, that is. And if she hasn't so much the worse for you.
I feel the need of attaining the maximum of intensity with the minimum of means. It is this which has led me to give my painting a character of even greater bareness.
Our economy is built upon convergent thinkers, people that execute things, get them done. But artists and designers are divergent thinkers: they expand the horizon of possibilities.
I'm irresponsible to my career in order to paint. Because painting is obsessive. I forget to eat. I forget to sleep.
It doesn't make much difference how the paint is put on as long as something has been said. Technique is just a means of arriving at a statement.
A person with normal eyesight would have nothing to know in the way of 'Impressionism' unless he were in a blinding light or in the dusk or dark.
The vast majority of English folk cannot and will not consider a picture as a picture, apart from any story which it may be supposed to tell.
It helped me in the air to keep my small mind contained in earthly human limits, not lost in vertiginous space and elements unknown.
A piece of wall can be visually disintegrated from the whole into a separate triangle by plunging a diagonal of light from edge to edge on the wall; that is, side to floor, for instance.
Realizing this, I knew that the actual space of a room could be broken down and played with by planting illusions of real light (electric light) at crucial junctures in the room's composition.
So smoking is the perfect way to commit suicide without actually dying. I smoke because it's bad, it's really simple.
I realised that you couldn't use the tools of yesterday to communicate today's world. Basically, that was the big light that went on in my head.
When it comes to the British monarchy, I prefer to be seduced by an image than presented with a real person. It's kind of a Warhol thing.
My Mum brought me up to believe that if you look after the pennies then the pounds look after themselves, and I could never do it.
But I'm more interested in why people are frightened by Jaws and why Jaws was such a hit than saying Spielberg's my main influence.
Whenever I've been well-known or hitting the press, I've always had to get my credit card out to prove I'm Damien Hirst.
I had a passport where I wrote 'artist' under 'occupation' and I remember thinking, 'That's it, it's proved!'
But the answer to how to live is to stop thinking about it. And just to live. But you're doing that anyway. However you intellectualise it, you still just live.
Being able to draw means being able to put things in believable space. People who don't draw very well can't do that.
I'm a bit claustrophobic, I don't like crowds, I live by the sea - that's what I see when I come out of my house in Bridlington.
