You once told me that your interest in painting started during your childhood.

I was one of those kids who could just draw. The only time I really sat still was when I was drawing. And then I'd sit still for hours and hours. In some ways I grew up on painting. My mother had lots of art books. One of my earliest memories is coming home from school and going to the book shelf. I remember sitting on the carpet and going through lots and lots of pictures, especially Romantic painting, Delacroix and Géricault, and then classical painters as well – David, Ingres – looking at these pictures, looking, looking, looking.

Tell me more about your parents.

My father was Greek and came to South Africa via Egypt. He was fighting in the Greek forces during the Second World War, contracted TB and was sent from Alexandria to Baragwanath Hospital in Johannesburg for recovery. There he met my mother. Her father was Greek and owned businesses all over the place, including the cinema in Umtata: a real entrepreneur. My father initially couldn't speak English. After he and my mum married he worked for my grandfather. He was trained as a lawyer but couldn't practise law here. My mum tried to get him to go to Wits University as an ex-serviceman to retrain, but he didn't want to. My mum had a job in a law firm. My parents lived in the Joubert Park area in a flat. After my brother was born my grandfather insisted they move out of the big city, so he bought them a bakery business and a house in Vryburg.

A kind of banishment to the countryside.

Vryburg was close enough to Johannesburg! There were also some very interesting people living there so it didn't feel like banishment. It was an amazing start to life. A beautiful old house with a big veranda. A shot of my grandmother on the veranda is the opening scene of My Lovely Day. The bakery was attached to the house. My father had a little office in the bakery and he'd see his friends and they would drink Greek coffee and smoke Greek cigarettes and talk Greek and play cards.