VB: Can you remember your first drawing?

PH: The first series of drawings I did was when I was three. I was interested in battles, especially Custer's Last Stand at the Battle of Little Bighorn, and the Battle of Hastings, with Harold with an arrow in his eye. I loved the Bayeux tapestry. My drawings were quite complicated, with arrows and spears flying, people getting decapitated. I never drew cats, dogs or flowers, but I did do a picture of Christ on the Cross when I was six, which I copied off a children's religious book.

VB: What was the first work of art that left an impression on you?

PH: My first artistic impressions were from children's biblical stories of David & Goliath and Samson, and I was pretty fascinated by the Garden of Eden. I also had a magazine called Look and Learn which gave me some fantastic ideas. The pictures weren't graphic, like children's illustrations today - they were paintings. I was always fascinated by paintings.

Man of Sorrows 1998 Oil on board, 25 x 19 cm

VB: Did you have a religious background?

PH: We weren't a terribly religious family, although my grandmother became very religious in later life. But I have always felt very strongly about God and been fascinated by the darker side of my nature and of life.

VB: How did your paintings develop?

PH: As I got older, I started getting interested in Picasso, Salvador Dali, and Henry Moore, and I did a lot of Cubist paintings at the age of around 13. I was a bit of a weird chile. I was convinced at one point that the world was going to end, and I wanted to do 12 paintings - one for every month of the year - before it did, so I did this series from The Book of Revelations. Then I did a series of tramps and down-and-outs when I was about 14.

VB: When did you start using oils?

PH: My grandmother gave me a set of oils when I was four, so I started oil painting pretty young. She hated waste, and she thought I was going to waste them be squeezing out every single bit and painting with it really thick. It made me realise how precious these things were and how little she could afford them. I started doing lots of oils, and I think I learned how to use them reasonably. I did an oil painting while I was still at primary school, and when the secondary art department teachers saw it they immediately started giving me extra tuition.

VB: How did you develop your style?

PH: The catalyst didn't come for a long time. I went to art school, but they didn't really like my ideas, so I ended up a bit disillusioned. It was only after I'd been in the Army, done lots of other jobs, like being a bouncer, and then gone back to art school that I had the luck to be taught by Sandy Moffat, who acted as a catalyst. He gave me confidence in myself and told me I could be a great painter if I painted what I really felt - if I went back to using my imagination, rather than just doing academic paintings.

VB: Did your move to Scotland as a child affect you?

PH: Yes. That's certainly when I started getting bullied, firstly because I was English and secondly because I was a weed. I used to get bullied at school, not for painting but because I didn't stand up for myself. I suppose that's one reason why I'm fascinated by bullies.

VB: There is a theme of cruelty running through your work. Would you say that you are inspired by violence?

PH: I'm fascinated by violence; I'll go out of my way to look for excitement. If there's a riot or an outbreak of football hooliganism, I won't shy away - I'll want to watch it. I just love that kind of energy; in some ways I'm addicted to violence, even though I hate it. Friends in Glasgow used to say that whenever there was a group of what we called 'neds' standing menacingly at a street corner, my eyes would glaze over with joy at seeing them, because I loved their faces. I used to be frightened of bullies, but I'm not any more, because it's like manna from Heaven for me to see those faces.

Patriots 1991 Oil on canvas, 213 x 274 cm Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow

I am fascinated by grotesque faces. I'm fascinated by beauty as well, but I'm not so good at painting it; it doesn't intereste me as much as pain. I can paint a good likeness if I want, but I'd much rather paint something out of my imagination. I like reading books by Alexandre Dumas or John Buchan, swashbuckling stuff with a lot of violence, but violence that has a bravery and heroism in it. I'm not so keen on literature that is cynical, and it's the same when I paint my subject matter: I'm not painting it in a cynical way. In Patriots, one of my most popular paintings, there are three thugs with two dogs jumping over a cliff. There is this misdirected energy, this humourous quality to it; but at the same time it has got all these emotions.

VB: Does the body play an important role in your work?

PH: For me the body is the machine of the soul; it is what the soul uses to transport itself about, so the body is beautiful to me. I think bodies are beautiful whether they are big, small, fat or thin. Often the ugliest people have the purest, simplest souls - you just have to read The Hunchback of Notre Dame. I like powerful things; I don't like things which are apathetic. The thing that attracts me to boxers and sportspeople is ther determination.

VB: Did the Army teach you self-discipline?

PH: What I've got is not really self-discipline, but an absolute obsession. The reason I get up early in the morning is that I want to go and paint; I've a need to paint. The only time I am really happy is when I'm painting or with my daughter. I'm most relaxed when I'm painting; I go into a dream world and everything else gets put to the bottom of the list. I'm just very lucky that I've got a job I love doing, but the stresses are quite incredible.

Croatian and Muslim 1994 Oil on canvas, 213 x 152 cm Private Collection

VB: As a war artist, is there a dilemma between reporting and painting imaginatively? You were criticised for painting a rape you didn't see.

PH: In Bosnia, I just wanted to get to the heart of what does happen: rape, women being killed, children being killed, men being killed. What the Army and the UN wanted was heroic paintings of how they were dealing with the situation - everyone wanted different things. Some people whould say I was a great war artist, and others would say I was crap. My painting of a rape, Croatian and Muslim, was universally liked by women because it didn't glorify rape as it has been glorified by art through the centuries. It's never been made to look as brutal as in that painting. I suppose that's whey men didn't like it and women did.

VB: What did you do when your paints were stolen in Bosnia?

Hos in Prozor Mixed media on paper, 30 x 21 cm

PH: I'm actually delighted now that they were stolen, because it made me use basic materials. I used candle wax, a couple of graphite pencils we still had, boot polish and that's it. It helped me put everything into the content of the work. I started to discover a technique with boot polish that I'm not sure anyone has ever used before. I think the work will last; the polish soaked into the paper beautifully and the wax resisted it nicely and created this lovely effect. Basically they were wax resist drawings, and I added some pastels when I got home.

I drew mainly at night in Bosnia. I didn't draw much on the spot; I don't really enjoy that and it was too dangerous. Most of my ideas came afterwards. I've got a photographic memory, not so much for details of uniforms but for emotions, things that happen, faces that interest me. Most of the wax resist drawings were of faces of refugees and soldiers. The faces I was most intersted in were the tough ones.

VB: You suffered from a painting block after Bosnia. What caused it, and how did you get over it?

PH: It lasted about six months, and finally I had to get Ian Macoll, who had been in Bosnia with me, to come down from Glasgow and lock me in the studio for two weeks to stop me from leaving. He brought me food.

The block happened for two reasons. Firstly I was so moved by what I saw in Bosnia that I didn't think painting had any importance any more. That didn't last too long once I started rationalising that it was my job and I could actually do something.

Secondly, the biggest difficulty about art is how to translate something into a painting, drawing or print. You can have fantastic ideas, you can see wonderful or terrible things, but how can you translate a war zone like Bosnia into art? What style, what dolours do you use? It's very difficult when you've got a blank canvas in front of you and you want to paint a picture of someone being raped - how do you go about it? It isn't documented, there is nothing you can look at - no one that I know has taken a picture of someone being raped. So I decided to blast it out, to re-use aspects from older paintings - like the toilet bowl, which came from an old painting called The Regimental Bath. It did take me a long time to get back into work again, but I finally won through. I did about 300 pieces in three months flat; it was a bit of a miracle.

VB: How important is technique to you?

PH: When I was doing all those early drawings and oil paintings I was learning about technique, although I was also letting my imagination run riot. You've got to have 50% technique and 50% imagination. Lucian Freud, for example, is a great painter, but he's got no imagination. I know it's a contraversial thing to say; his technique is fantastic, but for me he's not a complete artist in the way that Rembrandt is. Rembrandt was a brilliant painter technically, and he also had a great imagination.

Muslim 7th Soldier 1994 Etching, 39 x 33 cm

VB: You produced a series of prints of Bosnia. What do you like about printmaking?

PH: The printmaking technique I most enjoy is etching: very direct etching, drawing onto a copper or steel plate. I then hand it to the technicians and they do all the hard work of printing it. It gives me a big thrill to see the prints coming off the press, but for me the job is done when I've done the drawing.

VB: Has success made you feel more content with your life?

PH: Nearly all the artists who have found contentment have gone downhill, like Chagall. As soon as you become successful, famous or content, the art goes down the pan; it becomes flimsy, shallow. For me the greatest painters are the ones that got slightly madder the older they got; they kept the tension up, like Goya, who painted his greatest work at the end of his life. I am not craving happiness or contentment; that's why I create tension - it's a very selfish thing to do. I create it because I am terrified of losing inspiration. The inspiration keeps on coming, but it only comes to me through traumas like my trip to India.

VB: On your trip to India a year ago to paint tigers, your travelling companion Nicola Hicks nearly died from pneumonia. How did you cope with the situation?

PH: It was a traumatic experience, but I really thrived on it. It was a bit like Bosnia; the adrenalin was pumping through your body and you had to survive it. Before it all happened I hadn't been doing any painting because I had started to do a drawing and gone behind a tree for a pee and the crows had come down and torn the drawing up. I took it as a definite sign to say: "You're not going to get any work done on this trip." The day we left Nicola was nearly gone, and I was walking around thinking what should I do, when suddenly this innocent little chicken came wandering across the camp and all these huge birds came down and ripped it to shreds in front of me. I thought, this is the signal to get out, and that's when the action man in me started bribing car and train drivers to get us out of there.

VB: What are your goals?

England 1998 Oil on canvas, 39 x 66 cm

PH: I just want to get better. If you really want to aim high - and that's what I've wanted to do since I met Sandy Moffat - even if you miss, at least you've tried. To aim high, for me, is to do massive paintings like Delacroix or Géricault: big subjects which even if they turn out failures are worth doing. I do small paintings and I enjoy doing them, but the big machines, as I call them, are the ones I like most. They are monumental; you need physical, mental and spiritual energy to do them, and so when you come home at night, there is nothing left. I live these paintings; that's probably why I can be so difficult to deal with, because I am always thinking about them.

VB: In your opinion, what are the problems for a successful artist?

PH: Generally you get worse with success. You are under so much pressure to change; the critics are always putting their oar in, and the collectors and dealers are always telling you what to do. There is a terrible pressure to change just for the sake of it. You are fashionable for a couple of years, and then they forget you. The big trick in this game, and it is a game, is to keep on going and not to disappear.