Stella Vine
English painter and former stripper, who found success when Charles Saatchi bought a controversial painting by her of Princess Diana in 2004.
I like to watch old films. Meet Me in St Louis, Cul-de-Sac and Buffalo 66 are some of my favourites.
The freedom is far more important than the money. The endgame is to be an extremely famous artist in lots of museums all around the world so lots of people can see my work for free. I know what I'm making, I know it's good. I will reserve the right to paint the [bombed] bus or anything that is shocking in life. If someone wants to come and shoot me because they find that offensive, they can. As an artist, if you can't take that freedom, you're a wanker.
My working hours are not that conventional. I often get up about two in the morning and do a painting, and then I'll have a bath, and then I often feel very hungry around 4am, so I'll go into Soho and have a meal somewhere like Balans. That's what I love about living here - there's always life around me.
My background has been pretty abusive, nothing extreme, mainly psychological. There have been a few times when I have been slapped by partners and I have slapped back. I have enormous sympathy for those affected by violence. We need to progress beyond violence towards women and not cancel it out by saying women are also violent towards men.
I was making very aggressive provocative paintings. Whether the Rachel paintings, or the Diana paintings, I've sensed over the three or four years that I've been in getting press attention, I've sensed that it has not been that long since the woman painter was not allowed in the Royal Academy, and not allowed to paint nude men, and thee is such a huge body of work that men have made, versus the small body of work made by women, that I am not surprised to get this response.
I hope that whoever stole it, stole it because they loved it, and not because of all the hype.
You’re very vulnerable when you’re naked. The psychology is a bit weird. It’s all in the eyes between the two people so you’ve got to be confident. You’ve really got to pretend you are enjoying it. I tended to have lots of conversations with lonely old men and to meet lots of nutters as well. I have incredible tolerance for darkness. I can take on board quite a lot of damaged people, but it takes its toll psychologically.
All those people who derided me did me a favour, because now I don't care what anyone says about me. I feel I am now able to be a really powerful painter, to take on the mantle of the US male expressionist.
I always wanted her to say, "I love you, I’ll stand by you, you are very important to me," but she never did. She loved me inside, but I didn’t feel it.
I'm looking forward to being old, to be able to accept what I am and become self-sufficient. Mid-forties is a good age and it's not too far away.
I heard Postgate's Desert Island Discs last year and I was very impressed by him as a man, and thoroughly enjoyed his choice of When the Saints Come Marching In. Listening to a creative visionary, one's life suddenly feels exciting again - you just want to get making, and doing. Thank God for people like Oliver Postgate - when you discover them, life takes on a whole new meaning. What an incredible man.
I wanted my work to be seen for free in a public space, I want to be up there with Pollock and de Kooning, one of the big boys.
(I) imagined the princess, too scared to use the phone at the palace because she knew it was bugged. So she decides to go out, still wearing her best princess dress, and with her make-up smudged because she’d put it on in a hurry. And I thought she’d have gone to the shops and used a public phone. There’s a whole string of Asian newsagents at that particular place. It’s all very vivid… ‘Hi Paul, can you come over.’
I didn't think anyone really liked what I was doing and I literally have the bailiffs at my door.
Perhaps the people I choose to paint are often objects of derision celebrity is a bit of a put-down term, isn't it? But to me they are my world.
I have always been ambitious, no doubt about that. I always felt like I had to reach the dizzy heights of fame and success or whatever the heights are of a number of given professions I have dabbled in, to prove myself, "Stripper of the year" a bafta or whatever, for me it was by creating something interesting and entertaining or moving, but not by compromising the thing I was creating, that thing had to reach those heights, I guess it's about being accepted and loved a bit or a lot.
No, it doesn’t mean anything, does it? People occasionally ask for your autograph or say, ‘I saw you in the paper’, but that doesn’t mean anything at all.
I would never ever amount to anything without him. That’s what he told me.
I like strong/vulnerable interesting women, and then sometimes I like painting beautiful men, like Kurt Cobain, or Mr Darcy.