Peter Doig

“I've always been an outsider. Even in London. If I returned to Scotland, I'd feel a complete foreigner.”

“Painting becomes interesting when it becomes timeless.”

“I do feel Scottish in some way. Maybe it's to do with visiting my grandparents here every summer as a child, but I am aware of my Scottish ancestry. It's there all right, but it would be pushing it to label me a Scottish painter. Or, indeed, an anywhere painter.”

“When I was growing up, I never felt that I belonged anywhere because we never lived in a house for more than three months. That's all I knew, and that's why I don't really belong anywhere.”

“As an artist, you are aware there is this strange money market out there, but you have no sense of how it works.”

“What is bad painting? Picabia made some deliberately bad paintings, but they were by him, so great in a way.”

“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 love Trinidad and I love living there, but it's quite harsh.”

“It's not about perfection. What's a perfect painting? What's interesting about a perfect painting?”

“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.”

“I would never finish a painting if I didn't have a deadline.”

“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.”

“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.”

“It's still an escape for me, painting, so it also takes me elsewhere. I don't think I would do it otherwise.”