The fashionables, they tell me their artistic opinion. They just want to know if a painting is hot. Whether it will gain. And then they criticise anyone who is different, anyone who's not on the 'direct route' to taste. Fuck 'em.

Turner, the English romantic landscape artist and 'painter of light', was a man obsessed. Intensely prolific he was heavily reliant on his father, deeply affected by his mother's rejections and isolated from the usual breed of artists.

English painting is dead. It's dealers making fortunes out of sentimental dross. Dogs. Cherubs.

The Painter by Rebecca Lenkiewicz premiered at the Arcola Theatre, London, in January 2011 in the production which marked the opening of its new premises on Ashton Street.

Rebecca Lenkiewicz