I decided to become a painter when my first four paintings where all published and attracted a great deal of interest. I exhibited one of them and it was sold.

St Michaels Mount is a favourite place of mine; people will walk across to the Mount all day and assume they will be able to walk home. The spectacle of hundreds of people realising that the path they walked over on is disappearing under several feet of water is very amusing.

I paint what I see, not what a camera would see.

I really enjoy squeezing out a big lump of paint directly onto the canvas and leaving it; fresh, immediate and sometimes shocking.

And he that will this health deny, down among the dead men let him lie.

I studied for my degree in London and consequently ended up spending five years away from Cornwall. I deliberately moved away from the coast to experience a different way of life.

On my return to Cornwall I discovered that I was living in a tropical paradise. For now I am content to explore my own home and our nearest neighbour France.

I have been surrounded by artists and paintings throughout my life. My father Ted Dyer is an artist, and from a very early age I have spent time painting and drawing.

I used to own a dingy and can still sail one if pushed, but I like the pleasure boats.

I have lived in Cornwall from the age of 4, so I have always been aware of the artistic heritage that the county has. I feel very proud to be able to connect to this.

Painting is really good fun, I have always enjoyed it. As long as I paint what I want with the freedom that I enjoy, I never tire.

I use about 20 different colours to retain the luminance in my work.

I have improved the way in which I paint. The colours are cleaner and there is more energy in the brush work.

The paintings by Van Gough and Chagall had a big influence on me.

I decided to become a painter when my first four paintings where all published and attracted a great deal of interest. I exhibited one of them and it was sold.

It's a terrible thing wishing that it can be someone else's tragedy.

The lifestyle that an artist can have, the freedom to wander in the landscape with no real pressure or deadlines, was a very attractive one.

During the winter when the weather is too poor to work outside, I do use drawings and photographs, but I change my work so it is not just a time and place study.

Digital media has destroyed much of the magic and mystery of the medium.

My father is a well known artist, Ted Dyer, who has been painting for many years. Our work is very different, but growing up surrounded by paintings, paints, easels and art books does have an effect.

While I was at college studying design I decided to paint. I was also greatly inspired by the colours that I had seen on my travels in the Brazilian Rain forest.

I love the sea's sounds and the way it reflects the sky. The colours that shimmer across its surface are unbelievable. This, combined with the colour of the water over white sand, surprises me every time.

I still take photographs for my own use, personal studies. I do not feel that I can fully express my views through the medium and this is why I have moved towards painting.

My optimism for life carried through my work.

I use a wide selection of colours. It is impossible to produce work like mine using only the primary colours as they only mix a certain range of colour.

In some parts of the world there is very little tidal movement.

The majority of my work is from life. I spend most fine days from May to October painting outside.

My great love is my home county of Cornwall, I love to sit and watch people enjoying themselves on the beaches and in the harbour towns of Cornwall.

I want to paint big, bright, optimistic pictures of the place I love.

The most amazing thing to me about the sea is the tide. A harbour like St. Ives is totally transformed in a very short space of time by the arrival or departure of the sea.

I realised that if I did what I wanted to do, it would work.

I was told I was talented when I applied to Falmouth School of Art and that I should consider skipping the course and proceeding directly to degree level.

I apply paint directly from the tube and with my fingers.

The principal rule of art is to please and to move. All the other rules were created to achieve this first one.

All enterprises that are entered into with indiscreet zeal may be pursued with great vigor at first, but are sure to collapse in the end.

Let me first state that I believe that marriage is a sacred union between one man and one woman.

Entropy theory is indeed a first attempt to deal with global form; but it has not been dealing with structure. All it says is that a large sum of elements may have properties not found in a smaller sample of them.

There is no need to do any housework at all. After the first four years the dirt doesn't get any worse.

The avantgarde are people who don't exactly know where they want to go, but are the first to get there.

I never taste the wine first in restaurants, I just ask the waiter to pour.

After the first miscarriage, I tried to take the attitude that it was my body's way of telling me that this pregnancy wasn't meant to be.

Before and during the first phase of the war his administration repeatedly maligned the UN but now, that Iraq has turned into a quagmire, it is asking the UN for help.

You look at the whole Human Rights questions, I happened to be there at just the right time when the country was awakening - this goes to the first question you asked - the whole country was awakening to a hundred years of injustice that hadn't been resolved yet.

So, first you have to be able to play with a metronome. Then you take your freedom. If you play in an orchestra, you got to watch the conductor, he is like a metronome, but it is more difficult because he can change rhythms.

My first figure was a SLAYER eagle. And the dragons and the tribals are all I have got.

We're parents first, and once you have kids, everybody knows that you have priority lists. Number one is your family and everything else just kind of finds its place.

Everything has to be pulling weight in a short story for it to be really of the first order.

But in the first Gulf war the United Kingdom was not under any threat from Iraq, and is still less so in the second one. Then there is no justification for obstructing freedom of information, particularly as nations have a right to know what their soldiers are being used for.

I sort of understood that when I first started: that you shouldn't repeat a success. Very often you're going to, and maybe the first time you do, it works. And you love it. But then you're trapped.