Grayson Perry
I was in therapy for six years and then stopped. You get hardwired at adolescence, like a caterpillar that pupates and re-assembles itself as an insect. It's very hard to change after that.
I always think that painters are fighting over the last original brushstroke. To find your own voice is incredibly hard.
I like skateboarding because it's backyard danger. You don't need to go on an alpine holiday to get thrills.
Art is a process. Its expressing yourself and doing something, and throwing yourself into it and getting better at it and trying again. Thats what its about.
Im quite self-serving so, while going round a degree show, what I really want to find out is whats going on in the world today, particularly as technology has widened the chasm between generations.
The male role is heavily policed from birth, by parents, peers and bosses. Politicians in particular are harshly kept in line by a media that seems to uphold more bizarrely rigid standards of conformity than those held by any citizen.
I'm suspicious when I go to someone's house and everything is beautiful and perfect. Authenticity often means mistakes.
I embrace the middle ground, because curiously it has more edge to it than the cutting edge. It has been a weirdly neglected path for the audience of contemporary art. Im making art not for people who dont like art, but for people who are interested but maybe alienated by the more esoteric pieces.
Im interested in those things that hover in our unconsciousnesses - class, gender, identity - until we have to think about them for whatever reason. So normal is whatevers normal for you, until its not.
There are some very unsavoury aspects of art dealing that go with the unregulated nature of the market but its all part of the glamour. Glamour always has an unsavoury edge. I dont want to come across as preachy.
I think Im addicted to periods of doubt and low confidence. I think you should worry if you dont have them because then youre not trying hard enough.
Mother had an affair with the milkman, who later became my stepdad and my father left. My stepdad was an angry guy and Mother was a hysterical narcissist. It was a toxic mixture and there was a lot of disruption and violent arguments in the house.
Of course I can change a plug. But my father would not only know how to change a plug, he could have rewired the house, built the back wall. Its a generational thing.
Some people will have working-class, front-room grandma taste that is better than other people's. I went to stately homes that are a bit duff, and stately homes that were absolutely eye-popping.
I was sort of mute when I went to art school. There were two girls there who thought I was German because I only grunted.
Road rage is my vice. Im a cyclist and motorcyclist, and people who dont indicate drive me nuts.
Artists have their very distinctive voices that theyve developed over a long period. It takes time to find your voice, your vocabulary of images, or whatever it is.
As an artist I'm very aware of what I call Picasso-napkin syndrome - I've got this 20th century version of the midas touch, where if I do a little doodle it's worth money!
I hate it when people say that art shouldnt be a commodity. A lot of the rooms in museums, and all the Frieze week events, are there because of high-end art collectors.
Pottery was what sandal-wearing, windchime-lovers did. Art is sensitive to areas of visual culture that havent yet been colonised by the art world, and perhaps what they sensed back then was, here was an area that hadnt been fully explored.
Im as masculine as the next man - get me on the mountain bike and Im vicious.
I never held myself as a nice person for most of my life.
Well it's interesting because we use the word brand in a very derogatory way a lot of the time. I do it as much as anyone. But i think a brand is also sort of like momentum; it gets you through the bad patches if you've got a good brand.
I think its dangerous when people think theyre being expressive. Yuck. Its like people who say theyre spiritual, innit. You make the work you want to make, and you get on with it and hopefully it connects with other people.
I did basic embroidery and can probably mend a sock.
I think I grew up in an 'acultural' household - no books, no paintings, never went to an art gallery. I say that, but of course we had the TV.
If youre sure that everything youre going to do is going to be good, then whats the point? I used to think of it as just crippling self-doubt. Now I kind of see it as a sign that Im teetering on the edge of something new. Or troubling.
Maybe if they didnt tense up, always need to be competitive, always need to be in charge, always need to be the one at the top, men might find that there are benefits from releasing the grip of power.
Ive never actually sold a Post-it note, but I think I might.
I think that democracy has a lowest common denominator thing going on, so it might be the best of a bad bunch of political systems; but as a way of making art, actually, its not always that great, because it boils everything down.
Early on, my way of teasing the art world was by playing at being accessible. Like making pottery: I thought people would buy that for Christmas presents.
I tick so many boxes. Thats why I get a lot of gigs - because I can do the lectures, I can do the television thing, and I dress up, and by the way, Im an artist as well.
We live in a media saturated world. I'm sure artists of the past would have dealt with it in just the same way. If you're in the business of communication and images, then if you ignore the media-sphere you're just cutting off your own foot. It's just daft.
If you had bought my work in 1983 you could have had it for next to nothing.
Gender is great, and Im happy for anybody to celebrate wherever they are on the gender spectrum. Its got amazingly much easier in my lifetime.
Being vulnerable is the absolute key to having good relationships. And good relationships are the key to being happy.
I did a psychotherapy day once, about class, and the first thing they did was get us to talk about our names. Of course, me, being called Grayson, everybody thinks its somehow unusual and classy. No, its bang-on aspirational working class.
I realised that identity always seemed to be an issue when it was challenged - thats when it seemed to be most in 3D, so that you could look at it.
Well, within my business, visual art, the intake is 75 per cent female and yet you look at who has showed their work and I think there still is a dominance of males.
One of the dangers of male emotionality is that theyre not aware of it churning away beneath them the whole time.
My father was a keen photographer; he had his own darkroom.
From birth until I went to art college when I was 19, there are perhaps less than a dozen photographs of me.
When we talk of identity, we often think of groups such as black Muslim lesbians in wheelchairs. This is because identity only seems to become an issue when it is challenged or under threat.
I often hear women approvingly describe themselves or other women as feisty. Feisty, I feel, has sexist implications, as if standing up for yourself was exceptional in a woman. It sounds like a word that a raffish Lothario would use about a difficult conquest.
Many office workers loathe dress-down Fridays because they can no longer hide behind a suit. They might have to expose something of their messy selves through their 'casual' clothes.
Well, intellectual importance is directly linked to financial value in the art world. I mean, thats the thing you really want - museum quality. You want to go down in the annals of art history.
We learned how to look at art from religion.
You don't work in a vacuum. If you're a visual artist you work in a visual culture. If you're a pop musician you listen to pop music. If you're an artist you should know about the art world.
I've got a pot in my studio that is just a bitter rant against the art world. I call it my Dorian Gray.