I think the power of image is in mystery - I endlessly create mysteries, by way of this dystopian message, to initiate intrigue.
The work is never finished because women forever will be eternally mysterious to me - and I will always find that point where people are lost in thought, observed but lacking self-consciousness, the most beautiful.
It's amazing how if you turn up at a studio without an idea, a picture will take itself from momentum, and you quickly can lose control.
I look at my women with a Shakespearean element too - the variant of emotions they are capable of - it's not all completely dour, there is a bit of humor in there too! I actually think the whole Shakespearean world is wrapped up in every human being, from beauty to destruction and everything in between.
I'm always working in this universe - whether picturing hamburger joints, Virgin Marys, domestic scenes - using these "vacant-faced" women as a medium to question universal truths.
When I look at the women, it's from a male gaze of being fascinated, because beyond my mother, I've been around notorious women all of my life, and then, secondly, when I look at women and try and create fictional stories around them.
I'm inspired heavily by film influences - David Lynch's Blue Velvet, Federico Fellini, Alfred Hitchcock, Pedro Almodóvar, and what I see in the cinema - so there is a linking, an interweaving between memory, cinema and contemporary life, which the women in my pictures encapsulate.
I had been reading a lot of J.G. Ballard in the 90's and was fascinated by the idea of the vapid consumer society, the erotic charge of modern life, where the consumerist things we are coveting are just another form of destroying oneself - a modern world of uncertainty, where lost souls are trying to grab onto something for sense of contentment.
When I began in the late '90s, I felt quite lonely. We were coming out of the grunge era; it was the time of Corinne Day, The Face, the height of the YBAs, where models had to be "real," on real locations with no lighting. I rebelled against the grungeys - I didn't find the faux naturalism to be representative!
I suppose I like to set myself projects that are tight, focused, and then challenge myself with how broad I can go within that limited aspect. I think to Helmut Newton and film director, Federico Fellini - the added level of eroticism, the arousing message - and how it was possible for them to keep their signatures over so many years.
I like the drawings. And as a photography fan myself, I would look at Helmut Newton or Irving Penn and like to see the initial notes or drawings, to see where the ideas grew from. Also my sketches are key to my work because I came to realise early on that by doing drawings, I could formulate a plan of what I was thinking of - I could take control and direct the work.
Having a book is actually like a great master - helping to build a universe and unify work - especially in my pictures where there is such a strong signature, yet with a set of rigorous rules to it.
I'll always remember Jean Paul Gaultier, who did a project based on Madonnas, remarking on the images, "Yours are much better." Gaultier is really smart, so it's good getting a compliment from him!
I did a series of dark, desperate women shoots, my exhibitions weren't being well received, and then 9/11 happened, and I said to myself, "Have I gone too far?" Now I look back and realize going out on a complete limb at the time was right - well, people seem to be really responding to my message now, anyhow!
