"I have a hard time with drawings. Compared to my paintings, my drawings feel wimpish and apologetic. Using oil paint allows you to paint over all the mistakes and hide the traces of the process with layers of thick paint. By contrast, drawing is fragile and revealing, exposing blurred tentative lines and clumsy fingerprints. You therefore want to hide them away in a desk drawer or paint over them with paint. But that’s the beauty of drawing.

For me, drawing is about finding an initial way into the image. The initial way in has to be soft and forgiving, because nothing is harder than making a start. Drawing charcoal is a sympathetic tool. The word ‘sketch’ relaxes me. Drawing is a tool just for me, whether it then becomes a sketch for the desk drawer, or the basis for a painting, or an absolutely fantastic drawing in itself."