“With each painting I try to raise my own game in the technical production. It takes two to three months to make a piece and every moment has to be important. That’s why I think of my paintings as performances. They arrive from drawings which are manipulated and re-imagined digitally, and I have to reinvest every mark with an intensity or presence. When an orchestra plays, they’re not just playing notes, they have to make it alive and animate in the moment. It’s the same with painting, each mark has to be made as if I’m inventing it for the first time, which I am. It has a lot to do with the psychology of the work: it’s not just making something, but also trying to make it interdependent with your own psychological awareness. You have to be a bit of an athlete to make a painting. You have to be aware of your own body and movement, and know what you’re like and what kind of person you are. That’s a part of the development of my work, to learn about my own capabilities.”