Two years, 102 Wednesdays and this is the end, my last column. Giving it up has not been an easy decision. Writing for The Times has been a fantastic opportunity and a great privilege. Every week I can serve up a concentrated dose of my opinions to many times the number of people who have ever been to see my art. In terms of communicating with an audience, comparing writing for a national newspaper with having an exhibition of pots is for me like taking crack after a lifetime nursing a half of cider.

I am giving up this heady drug because it takes me away from my first love and main business, making art. The slow and constant labours in the studio are too easily sidelined by the imperative of a weekly newspaper assignment. Ask any columnist, and he or she will tell you of the tyranny of the deadline always looming. One told me that her children said that she suffered from permanent PCT (precolumn tension); another told me that he had longed to give it up for years to write more books but the paper kept giving him more money and better billing, tempting him into prolonging the ecstasy.

Of course for a while there will be a hollow in my week. No longer will I have to discipline myself, sit and wait for my thoughts to come like shy animals into a forest clearing. My body will miss the weekly fix of stress hormones followed by a sense of achievement and a flood of relaxation as I click on “send”.

The main difference I experience between writing and making art is that, with words, I find there is no coasting. In the studio I think hard sometimes and pray for inspiration, but then, once a decision is made, a theme or subject chosen, I turn on the radio, gather my materials and fall into a kind of relaxed trance, exercising familiar skills, the momentum of the concept carrying me forward for hours or days of drawing, sculpting bliss. With the written word though, if I stop thinking, I stop writing. Every word needs a gentle shove, a tot of concentration to keep the sentence moving along. There is nowhere to hide, no beguiling patterns and colours to mask sloppy thinking. On the page I feel my mind treks naked. Maybe if I concentrated on writing for 25 years, it would come easier. Maybe.

I find I have become fond of my readership, all 654,482 of you who buy the paper, and several times that number online. Pretty well every time I am out at an opening I am approached by someone who wants to give me positive feedback about something I have written. This is a delight and a bond I will miss.

Some art-world professionals have remarked that they found some of my opinions surprisingly conservative. I am not ashamed to celebrate old-fashioned skills and a visceral approach to art in a field that sometimes seems in thrall to ideas rather than experiences. I find some of the art world’s fixation with originality and novelty a touch last century. I do not think I am alone in that, whatever fashion is holding sway, I always look for quality, sensitivity and refinement.

Because I occasionally enjoy a dig at pseudo-academic trendiness, some culturati, devout believers in the progressive orthodoxy, assume I am Conservative with a big C. This amuses me, as holding even mildly right-wing views is just about the only thing that will get the unshockable contemporary art establishment on to its hind legs. The intellectually driven art world likes to think of itself as left-wing. This seems to be related to the curious belief that just by loving art you are a better, more moral, person.

Also there is the idea that revolution and innovation, stock-in-trade for the art business, are seen as the preserve of angry young reds. A lot of art bods still seem to believe in lefty street-cool. The content of art may be sticking it to The Man, but most contemporary art is not made in a socialist cooperative.

You have only to wander through the Frieze Art Fair to come to the conclusion that most contemporary artists are happy to manufacture an investment commodity beloved by darkest-blue capitalists, a consumer durable par excellence. Business recognises that creative rebels are intrinsic to capitalism; it is their natural home. No matter how many antiwar shows and charity auctions we put on, the art world cannot escape the fact that a lot of us need rich City collectors to pay the bills as much as they need bohos and radicals to enliven their walls, their social circles and their investment portfolios. It was ever thus, except the fat cats used to be popes or kings rather than hedge-fund managers.

I thoroughly enjoy spouting off, and since 2003 I could have had an alternative career doing just that, but despite the pleasures of giving myself up to being a media whore, I am resisting. One thing that has niggled at me for the past two years is that the intellectual curiosity and sense of mischief that often drives these columns has been diverted away from my studio. Playing with social issues and art theory with anger and humour is an important part of my art practice, and I hope to refocus that energy into my art. I am not ruling out the occasional foray into print.

So farewell. Thanks to my colleagues for being professional and fun, and thanks to you for reading.

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