The sculptor, printmaker and painter tells Charlie McCann about his favourite places—they reveal an eye for beauty as well as a taste for symbolism

Thanks to the Economist’s “intelligent life” for this briefing on an artist’s favorite visuals:

JOURNEY From Beijing to Yining (above)
In 2010, my son Edmund went on his gap year to Yining, in the province of Xinjiang. My wife and I were worried; Edmund was one of only two Europeans in the city and there’d been tremendous unrest in the region. After eight months, we decided to check up on him. We flew to Beijing and got on a train. Our journey inland was really exciting: from our cabin we saw tiny villages, where every little patch had been cultivated, and passed vast deserts where huge dust storms turned the sky black. Eventually we got to Xinjiang. By that time, Edmund could speak rudimentary Mandarin. With him, we ended up travelling to Yining by an overnight coach. It was this mad bus full of chickens, geese and dogs.

WORK OF ART 
Pierrot (formerly known as Gilles), by Jean-Antoine Watteau
Stylistically, my work is very different from Watteau’s, but “Gilles” somehow represents what I feel about painting. It is curious, enigmatic: the man portrayed is an actor so you don’t know whether you’re looking at him or the character he’s playing. The painting’s status is odd—it may have been commissioned to advertise the players’ company—but I think the status of all paintings is odd. What do they do? Watteau’s work, full of fantasy and imagination, acknowledges the artificial character of painting: it’s not a document, it’s not necessarily about truth. The point of painting is pleasure and mystery. It satisfies metaphysical questions about life.

Read the whole article here.