If we are to change our world view, images have to change. The artist now has a very important job to do. He's not a little peripheral figure enterta… - David Hockney

I've started painting much more freely, and faster. I think it's working in the theatre that did it. You know what the Glyndebourne scene-painters said about my The Magic Flute? They said they had to wear sunglasses to paint it.

With chemical film, it was possible to alter photographs, but you had to be an expert. That's not true any more. The LA Times fired a photographer at the beginning of the Iraq War for editing two shots together. Photography is crumbling. Certainly it is for the newspapers a bit now, isn't it? There will be painting again, absolutely!

We live in an age where the artist is forgotten. He is a researcher. I see myself that way.