Your art practice has expanded recently, from portraits to landscapes, cityscapes and beyond, has this been a reflection of a change in the way you work? My practise has expanded beyond that in fact. I have just made a video installation with Keira Knightley called Maze, which will be shown at Riflemaker Gallery in April 2010. I don't really make portraits at all any more and haven't done so for a year or more. I am focusing on my own work: the film piece and also a series of paintings based on the American South West called Home on the Range, also to be exhibited at Riflemaker.

You have produced several headline-grabbing commissions in the last few years, what do you think about your work as being viewed as potentially controversial? Controversy is nothing more than a form of currency. I don't go out of my way to trade in it but at the same time  I think its important that artist's work occasionally slaps the arse of the public, just to check they are still awake.

What do you think makes a good portrait? Strange as it may sound, I am not all that interested in portraits. I used to be. Nowadays I don't go out of my way to see them, particularly contemporary portraits which generally I can't stand. I don't know if its possible these days to make an interesting portrait painting, unless it's ironic and then it's in danger of being a one-liner and little more. I don't think portrait painting knows what it is anymore. If I did want to see a good portrait I'd go and check out the old masters I guess.

You have a self-confessed interest in the theatre, do your paintings have an innate theatricality to them? I think they often do, perhaps more so now than previously. I seem to have rejected any attempt to create anything 'sincere'. I find that approach far too ernest. Everything I make these days seems to have been filtered through a layer of melodrama.

In the past you have been fairly critical about the lack of attention paid to portrait artists in the current artistic climate, do you still feel that portrait painting is on the periphery? That was a long time ago. Nowadays I am rather pleased that portrait painters are on a kind of periphery. They cause much less mischief that way. They don't seem to know where to go. It's sad. These days when I see the BP awards I usually feel quite depressed. There are always one or two interesting pieces, usually the wild cards thrown in to make for an interesting show, but beyond that the works leave me cold: 'Yet another photo-realist depiction of someone's Grandma'. It doesn't seem to say very much beyond being a demonstration of an artist's skill which I find very boring.

What inspired you to specifically collect drawings together for a group exhibition? Drawing was my first love. I did it long before I knew what a paint brush was. I feel that drawings are often more revelatory than paintings (about their maker) Drawing is often a very private language and yet also, in the case of an artist like Paul Noble: a very public language. I am interested in that comparison: the doodle and the epic masterwork. I am also interested in the drawings that non-artists make. Anyone can pick up a pencil and make marks on a piece of paper. There's something wonderfully democratic about drawing in that sense. We might not all be able to render like Michaelangelo but for me that's not the point. The point is much more to do with a kind of revelation of the workings of a person's mind. I'm interested to know what drawing means to different people, what place it fills in their practise or their lives.

How did you choose the non-artists to contribute work? It was largely a question of people I knew, either directly or indirectly through friends. There are a number of people in the public eye such as Stephen Merchant and Julian Barratt who are creative people but  not people whose drawings anyone would have seen. I think its quite a privilege to have such an insight into the workings of the mind of such people: a chance to see whether drawing contributes in any way to their own creative processes.

How did you get Rolf Harris to be in the show?! What kind of work will he be exhibiting? I just rang him up. He gave me his number some years ago at a private view. we are showing a couple of Rolf's drawings, both very different. One is quite familiar to fans old enough to remember Rolf's Cartoon time: a cartoon style self portrait as Venus climbing out of a clam shell called the Birth of Rolfus. The other is a much more private drawing made of Rolf's Father: a tender and subtle drawing that will hopefully show a side to Rolf that the public will be unaware of.

Do you have any personal favourite drawings? I have already bought two drawings from the exhibition and they haven't even gone on display yet. There are going to be some very beautiful pieces in the show.

Was your mum keen to be in the show alongside Turner-prize winning artists? My Mother is an interesting case. She began painting about a year ago after sixty-odd years of saying she would one day, and she has revealed herself to be incredibly talented. I know I am biased but she genuinely has a phenomenal natural facility. I have no doubt that she would give any Turner-prize winner a run for their money.