JULIAN OPIE

"What happened was I had a commission to draw Kate Moss. She came round to the studio, and while I was photographing her face, I also photographed her whole body as she was standing there. (I was too shy to ask her to take her top off or anything, which was a bit silly in hindsight, because I know now that Gary Hume got her completely naked that same week.)"
Julian Opie

STELLA VINE

"What influences and inspires you?
Joan of Arc, Balthus, Jean Michael-Basquiat, Anna Bjerger, Pauline Boty, Charlotte & Emily Bronte, Dolly & Jemima Brown, Lewis Carroll, Dawn Clements, Matt Collishaw, The Cramps, John Currin, Charles Dickens, Oriana Fox, Katy Jane Garside, Tracey Emin, Tanya Fairey, Rachel Feinstein, PJ Harvey, Sigrid Holmwood, Paul Housley, Chantal Joffe, Brad Kahlhamner, Frida Kahlo, Alex Katz, Martin Kippenberger, Dietmar Lutz, Sarah Lucas, Alex Gene Morrison, Tim Noble & Sue Webster, Pat O’Connor, Sylvia Plath, Elizabeth Peyton, The Shaggs, The Raincoats, Edie Sedgewick, Le Tigre, Luc Tuymans, Sophie Von Hellermann, Francis Upritchard, Andy Warhol."
Stella Vine

MATTHIAS WEISCHER

"My paintings are made of mistakes, there are many layers in each painting, many pictures are built up to produce one final picture."
Matthias Weischer

MARLENE DUMAS

"Painting doesn't freeze time. It circulates and recycles time like a wheel that turns. Those who were first might well be last. Painting is a very slow art. It doesn't travel with the speed of light. That's why dead painters shine so bright."
Marlene Dumas

MARTIN KIPPENBERGER

"People come along [in twenty years or so] and can say what the work and the artist were really all about. What people will say about me then -- or maybe not say -- will be the only thing that finally counts. Whether or not I contributed to spreading a good mood. What I'm working on is for people to be able to say that Kippenberger had this really good mood".
Martin Kippenberger

WILHELM SASNAL

"I never believed in excuses such as "I can't paint because I don't have a studio." No, this is only an excuse. I think the point is that you must also adjust to the circumstances of the space you have."
Wilhelm Sasnal

INKA ESSENHIGH

"It is really important for me to make work that is for something. I don't have a specific audience in mind when I paint, but I want to make work that reminds people they are alive. I want to remind them of the fun of being a living being. I want my art to prod people into reflecting on the pleasure of moving, feeling, breathing and being alive, right now."
Inka Essenhigh

ELIZABETH PEYTON

ROB: So you really have a lot of hope for the idea of something going on and affecting people of a later era the way that we've been affected and spoken to by people from one hundred years ago.
ELIZABETH: That's what oil paint's about. You know it'll last forever.

JORG IMMENDORFF

"The life force of art knows nothing of normal time. It makes itself known irregularly, affecting both our understanding of the past and our ability to cope with the future. What we really need is another concept of time in order to grasp the essentials of art."
Jorg Immendorff

PETER DOIG

"I'm not trying to make paintings look like photos. I want to make paintings using photos as a reference, the way painters did when photography was first invented."
Peter Doig

LUC TUYMANS

"I was discussing an article in the newspaper with my wife because I had read this rather sexist comment by our minister of foreign affairs in Belgium, and he said that he’d met this woman, Condoleezza Rice, who was at that point visiting our country. He said that she was “a strong woman and not unpretty.” And I said to myself, “That’s it.”
Luc Tuymans

CECILY BROWN

'I think when I was doing a lot of sexual paintings,' she remembers, 'what I wanted - in a way that I think now is too literal - was for the paint to embody the same sensations that bodies would. Oil paint very easily suggests bodily fluids and flesh.'
Cecily Brown

GERHARD RICHTER

''If the Abstract Pictures show my reality, then the landscapes and still-lifes show my yearning. This is a grossly oversimplified, off-balance way of putting it, of course; but though these pictures are motivated by the dream of a classical order and a pristine world - by nostalgia, in other words - the anachronism in them takes on a subversive and contemporary quality.''
Gerhard Richter

DAMIEN HIRST

Do you take lots of drugs?
Damien Hirst: Er yeah, I'm trying not to. I guess so. Nothing really dangerous. I don't really buy any, but I have a lot of friends who do, so I go out sober and say I'm not gonna take any drugs and then I end up drunk and do it. And then wake up the next day and say I'm never doing that again.

JEFF KOONS

How do you see advertisement?
Koons: It's basically the medium that defines people's perceptions of the world, of life itself, how to interact with others. The media defines reality. Just yesterday we met some friends. We were celebrating and I stated to them: "Here's to good friends!" It was like living in an ad. It was wonderful, a wonderful moment. We were right there living in the reality of our media.

JENNY SAVILLE

"Painting is what it is. When it's really good, it makes your eyes widen, your breath deeper. You know you're standing in front of something incredibly important about your existence but you don't know why.
Jenny Saville

FRANCIS BACON

"We live with this vast sea which we call the unconscious and which we don't know. Everything which is going on probably sinks into it. Every so often these images refloat."
Francis Bacon