The pattern of this triptych is inspired by the stone mosaic designed by the sculptor Erich Fritz Reuter for the floor of the entrance hall of the Berlin Philharmonic building, designed by the German architect Hans Scharoun in 1963 as a concert hall. Reuter's mosaic combines areas of white stone with others that are coloured and represent, in their proportions and progression, one of the best-known musical cryptographies — the BACH motif, created by J.S. Bach himself and later used by many composers in his honour. It takes the sequence of notes B-A-C-H in German notation, or si bémol-la-do-si in French notation.

Reuter is better know for his numerous public commissions, mostly large-format sculptures in bronze or stone. This mosaic stands out from all other works of his for its conceptual origin, transposing what is musical into the visual realm.

I have spent many hours in the studio looking at this pattern, following its lines up and down these canvasses and know it well by now. It has no centre, nothing stands out, its rhythms are all over the place yet perfectly balanced.

I spent the 1980s and 90s painting the Harlequin costume pattern as if it were my own, knowing full well that it belongs to Picasso more than any other artist. Recently, I have been thinking that it is time to let the work of others back into my work in an explicit way. Why not start with an artist whose work does not, generally, interest me? The only definition of art that has seemed sensible to me since my student days is that art is what artists do, so it may well be that in the work of any artist, no matter how uninteresting it may seem to me, there may be something to lead me somewhere that I would not have reached by myself.