This new cycle of paintings — they’re very personal. They’re about your love life. They’re about abandonment, death, and joy. They also seem to have a sense of redemption, of deliverance.
If you have a passionate love affair, it’s beautiful, but it’s also sort of tragic. You know in Pompeii where you have the two lovers that are curled up together and they’ve died in the ash cloud? It’s this idea of being together for eternity. That’s why these paintings are called “Lovers Grave.” It’s a place of joy and love and forever, and also it’s a promise — a promise to the next world, I suppose. This work is a pouring out of my soul. Since I was ill, that’s become more and more important to me because we all have a time limit. Because I’ve been given the extra time, I mustn’t fuck up. I have to have this clarity about why I’m doing something. There can’t be any ulterior motive. It can’t be because I want to sell a painting.