Few critics would have expected their near-unanimous mauling of Damien Hirst's recent collection of paintings to make a notable dent in the millionaire artist's famously robust ego, but even they probably never expected this reaction: give me a bit more time and I'll be as good as Rembrandt.

In an interview in today's Guardian, the 44-year-old mainstay of the Young British Artists scene, whose show at the Wallace Collection in London was variously dismissed as "an embarrassment" and "shockingly bad", has responded by rejecting the notion of innate artistic genius as the route to greatness. Instead, Hirst insists, application is the key.

"Anyone can be like Rembrandt," he said. "I don't think a painter like Rembrandt is a genius. It's about freedom and guts. It's about looking. It can be learnt. That's the great thing about art. Anybody can do it if you just believe. With practice you can make great paintings."

He accepted, nonetheless, that he had plenty of hours to put in to compete with the 17th century Dutch master.

Hirst capped years of commercial and – to a lesser extent – critical success involving his trademark dead animals in formaldehyde and mass-produced spots and butterflies with an auction 14 months ago which brought in £111m. By then he had already begun a period of two years shut away in his garden shed in Devon, a process which resulted in the 25 oil paintings which went on show last month.

He has another collection of paintings opening at London's White Cube gallery this month, and says he his deadly serious about the pursuit: "I definitely think it's early days for me painting. I don't think I've arrived. I don't think I'm as great as they are. It's a long road, and these are the first paintings I'm satisfied with."

The question of inspiration versus sheer perspiration has been around for as long as people have painted, noted Dr Julian Stallabrass from the Courtauld Institute of Art, and history showed that results arrive more quickly for some than others.

"You have some people who were particularly slow learners. Cézanne, for instance, worked for decades obsessively developing his skills and his style, and was still working on his style when he died. But then you have people like Raphael or Picasso, to whom it seems to come very easily. If you see an exhibition of Dalí's early works you can see someone just playing around with other styles with a lot of ease."

However, not everyone can lock themselves away in a garret with the presumption of turning into a Cézanne, Stallabrass warned. "If you spend a lot of time drawing you will certainly improve. But that does not necessarily mean you'll succeed. There have always been many more artists than famous artists, and this is true all the more these days. There are a lot of art students working very hard, but not many of them will became well known."

Angus Stewart, president of the International Association of Art Critics, drew comparison with Francis Bacon.

"Francis Bacon would have agreed that it is about looking, and he certainly believed it could be learned, and he learned it – to a certain extent. But Bacon himself would not have claimed to be technically the equivalent of Rembrandt, though he would say of course that in his understanding of the human experience he could be rated with him."

Perhaps more unexpectedly, a similar line was taken by Jeremy Deller, the 2004 Turner Prize winner who is best known for non-painterly works such as brass bands playing acid house tunes and a recreation of the 1984 clash between miners and police at Orgreave in South Yorkshire.

"Not everyone can paint like Rembrandt, however hard you try," he said. "It's like saying anyone can be Velázquez, or anyone can be Beethoven. It's not about hard work, it's about something else, which is what genius is, I suppose. It's about that sheer quality."

Hirst had been driven to make the comments because he had "failed so publicly" with his paintings, Deller surmised.

"The thing about Damien Hirst is that he did work very hard, but he worked very hard at doing one thing, which is repeating and marketing himself. But he didn't work very hard at being a decent artist for some years. For about 10 years he's done very little, he's just replicated himself because he knows he can make money out of it."