I was working in Toronto in the '80s, and used to finish off my show with the song 'Vincent', which I had just learned around that time. When I was writing out the words, I realised that this was a song of great substance, and it was almost like a piece of literature. It was equally as potent when read as when sung, and through it I became more drawn to Vincent the man, as opposed to the artist.

At the end of the engagement, I was presented with a print of 'Starry Night' by the promoter, and through that, I became more interested in the art itself.

Vincent Van Gogh was born in Zundert in the Netherlands in 1853, and he worked as an art dealer, a missionary worker, and a teacher. He only became an artist in 1880, when he was 27 years old, 10 years before he died. During this time he produced more than 2,000 pieces of work, including 900 paintings and 1,100 drawings and sketches. He was only 37 when he died through suicide, and he produced most of his well-known paintings in the two years before that, so maybe he sensed an urgency and was aware that the end was near for him.

Vincent could have lived a very comfortable life as an art dealer, and just settled for buying and selling art and restoring things, but he didn't do that, and I admire anybody who is determined and undeterred and who lives their life the way they want to do. I've been very lucky to have been given a talent, but I sometimes feel that I haven't always pursued it or pushed myself as much as I could, so I really admire someone like him who did.

He was a very accurate artist, and could sit you down and sketch you perfectly, so he could have made a good living as a straightforward artist, but he decided to concentrate on developing his own style instead. One of the things I admired about him was his acute awareness of life and nature. This is very much evident in his paintings, as is his accuracy of atmosphere. For someone who was deemed to be a mad artist, he was a great observer, and really had a great ability to see things so clearly, and put them all down on canvas.

I was also drawn to him for reasons that included his restlessness of spirit, and also his close friendship with his pal, Paul Gauguin. I could identify with that because I have a very close friend who is a great artist and musician, and we have a similar relationship, in which we influence one another.

A very important factor was that Vincent felt like he was going to crumble and become undone, which I suppose he did in the end, and as an artiste, I can certainly relate to that, and identify with the feeling that you might unravel at any point.

The more I read about his life, the madness, and his relationships with family and friends, the more normal it appears, because while he didn't have a perfectly normal life, who actually does? I don't think he was as mad as people said he was anyway. What people perceive as madness to them, is relatively normal in the circles that I mix in.

I'm friends with artistic people and artists who are living in quite bohemian surroundings and circumstances, which are quite beautiful too. They live that life of going away painting in northern Spain for a couple of months every year, and regularly having little supper parties, where people talk and drink wine and get drunk. It's a situation that I believe to be quite normal, although other people might perceive it to be quite odd and will say to me, "You did what?"

In an airport or a bookshop, I almost use books on Vincent's life or art the way other people use self-help books. They normalise me, and I know it seems like a strange benchmark, but I can look at his life and know that I'm not that mad after all!

Vincent realised the importance of time, and living his life to the full, and he put a whole lifetime's worth of painting into a relatively short timeframe. He suffered recurrent bouts of mental illness, and during a seizure in 1888, cut off the lobe of his left ear, and although many medical opinions have been proffered as to the nature of his illness, it has never been clarified what he actually suffered from. He committed suicide in the end, by walking into a field in France and shooting himself with a revolver in the chest. The wound proved fatal, and he died in his bed two days later.

Sometimes people dislike those who represent the things they feel they haven't achieved in their own lives, but I rather like this guy, because he represents the things I have done, and also those that I haven't. My real admiration for Vincent was around his determination and drive, and his ability to pursue his art through all of the self-doubt he was experiencing.

He lived and he loved and most importantly, he appreciated things in life, simply because it was in his nature to do so.