Painting doesn't have a function, not in the way that music or film does... I mean, you can dance to music. Music can be used for a soundtrack, so it has a function in that sense, beyond itself. But painting doesn't... But I do believe that painting has a purpose.
A photo is like a map, a way of giving me a foot into a kind of reality I want... I'm not trying to make paintings look like photos. I want to make paintings using photos as a reference, the way painters did when photography was first invented.
It's not about perfection. What's a perfect painting? What's interesting about a perfect painting?
There could be a hundred paintings in every one painting, depending on when you stop.
Painting becomes interesting when it becomes timeless.
It's still an escape for me, painting, so it also takes me elsewhere. I don't think I would do it otherwise.
I also learned that you are affected by your environment, even if you try not to be. Color, light that is, matters because you want to do justice to it and also you get excited by it.
I constantly have to negotiate with my doubts.
Seeing a play, listening to music - you'll always contextualize it in your own way. Whoever you are, wherever you are; I think that's really important.
I sometimes wish I had never had to sell a painting. Every painting you make represents the time it was made and how you were feeling and what your influences were... You are never going to feel that way again, so you can never repeat it.
If you are someone like Jeff Koons, and you have to work out how to make a big chrome heart or something, then there are lots of people and a big production involved. The money is more natural somehow. For me, I am just on my own in the studio, trying to make things work. One thing is sure: it doesn't make painting any easier.
What is bad painting? Picabia made some deliberately bad paintings, but they were by him, so great in a way.
I would never finish a painting if I didnt have a deadline.
How do you complete a painting, really? There are paintings by so many different artists that are interesting precisely because they haven't really been completed.
I don't feel any real animosity towards critics when they write negative things. I think some are more perceptive than others. Some are very knowledgeable about painting. But it isn't something I have any influence over, so there isn't any point in worrying about it.
I think if I was Trinidadian, I would latch more on to the myths and romanticise the place more. I don't think it's my place to do that - they're not really mine. I'm an outsider.
As an artist, you are aware there is this strange money market out there, but you have no sense of how it works.
You cannot just be working in a vast, air-conditioned loft space and think you are going to make a decent painting. Francis Bacon had a special studio built, and he felt completely emasculated in there. I have to be somewhere comfortable.
I don't think money can help you become a better painter, for sure. You can have all the studios you want; it won't help you make a better painting.
I'm not one of those artists having people there lying around on their paintings, you know, like Hockney or whoever.
I love Trinidad and I love living there, but it's quite harsh.
