Christ on the Sea of Galilee c. 1963  28 x 36 (71.1 x 91.4)                                                                                                                                            

I used to like going to church. Most of it I didn’t understand but I always had this feeling that there was a great and profound mystery which had tremendous meaning. When you are a child and you read in the Bible of miracles, you wonder very much. Later all that changes and it becomes an amazingly imaginative idea of the world, based on truth, and written by great poets. Man, through this poetry, is trying to express about his life what is so terribly difficult to understand. He stands in mystery and through it he is trying all the time to understand.

At certain times, one may begin to make drawings and paintings of biblical things. The Bible is full of these tremendously imaginative ideas. They are profound symbols. The richness of the Bible is terrific. It is the greatest stuff that has ever been written.

It all sounds so confoundedly pompous when one puts this into words. But what makes one draw and paint? What makes a Beethoven? There is something very mysterious about being a Delacroix or a Courbet; about being a Manet or a Cezanne; and having this strange, compelling demon which absolutely makes a man go on – it doesn’t matter through what. Look at a man like Turner. Seen objectively, it’s very remarkable how he went on and worked and developed. It is being inspired. A sort of divine state.

I think it is in the artist; and it is he who recognises it – that’s the extraordinary thing. How is it that one person is a Handel or a Mozart out of whom this wonderful musicsimply pours; and another man hasn’t a note of music in him? There is something very special about these people. One knows what is meant when it is said that all men are born equal but they are not. And one doesn’t have to be an artist. Many of the humblest people have this quality.

Ordinarily I don’t think along these lines. I just say, what a damned good painting this Gauguin is, or what an amazing, happy extrovert chap Rubens was. We all are, I suppose, several people. But I must emphasize that I don’t think that Mozart or Handel or Rembrandt went about thinking ‘I have something divine in me.’ They just got on with the job.

Sometimes my own things frighten me. This does. To me it is as if he has seen every disaster. Last night on the telly, I heard the Jewish cantor Koussevitzky. You listen to that man, and you see the fi lm the Germans – these particular ‘last solution’ people – made of the siege of Warsaw. And it’s heart-breaking. Once you’ve seen something like that, you can’t forget it. It’s so unbelievably horrible. It’s criminal the way that human beings can behave. How can they? And at the same time you know that in the world these terrible things are happening. I can’t stand a man like Napoleon. The Napoleons or the Caesars are, as far as I’m concerned, all in the same bag. What does all this business of power and ambition and success mean? It’s all politics. It’s terrifying to see the jealously that goes on around one. But apparently sane and reasonable people have these particular qualities – so help the others. I think perhaps the normal human-being growing up is all these things. Gradually you learn more and you develop. And you are as reasonable as you can be.

I think that an artist has to go through the whole spectrum. You can’t say ‘I like blue, I like red’; it sounds fatuous. To me, purple is a melancholy colour and if anything, it is because of one’s memories. You feel something ghastly is just over; and the next day, if you are a writer or a painter, and you are able, you do something about it. You don’t suddenly swing from something sad to something happy. Your work is everything that you experience.

Latterly because I work more freely and because of this miracle that has happened tome, I can leave a painting to dry and pick up another canvas. Before – and it is far away and long ago – the expense of all these materials worried me desperately; and rather than have several things on the go at once, I preferred to work on one thing, trying to complete it to the utmost. But now, if somebody doesn’t like my paintings, I shrug my shoulders and I don’t put my foot through them.