Sean Scully

“Art is transformative. It's not 2+2=4. It works like the sea. It changes geography through its constant and relentless movement, just the way plants and water shape the world.”

“I started at school. When I painted, all the girls would come and sit around me. I realised that this was a really good way to get girlfriends.”

“My art is based on impurity. You have to mix things from different refined cultures to get something raw, to make it go again.”

“I am a very spiritual person: I could say a Catholic with a strong underpinning of Zen.”

“I look at my paintings for a very long time before letting them out of my studio. I like to get on the treadmill and look around at all of my paintings while I exercise. I try to stare them down to make them reveal their weaknesses. If they reveal weaknesses, they get repainted.”

“I work on stretched linen canvas, sized so that the surface already has a sense of tension when I begin. It is a very rich and reactive surface. I begin by drawing on the canvas with a kind of loose line, very simply and freely. I paint very thinly, which allows me to change the drawing if I want to.”

“I'm Irish in the mythic, romantic sense, but in the living sense, I'm a Londoner.”

“My work is very serious, and I use a lot of black, too.”

“I was doing an interview with a curator, and he asked me to sum up art in one word. Before he even finished asking the question, I said, 'Impurity.' Because that's it.”