“I’ve done what I could as a painter and that seems to me to be sufficient. I don’t want to be compared to the great masters of the past, and my painting is open to criticism; that’s enough.”

I’m not performing miracles, I’m using up and wasting a lot of paint.

Thanks to my work everything’s going well; it’s a great consolation.

If the world really looks like that I will paint no more!

My eyes were finally opened and I understood nature. I learned at the same time to love it.

I had so much fire in me and so many plans.

Getting up at 4 in the morning, I slave away all day until by the evening I’m exhausted, and I end by forgetting all my responsibilities, thinking only of the work I’ve set out to do.

No one but myself knows the anxiety I go through and the trouble I give myself to finish paintings which do not satisfy me and seem to please so very few others.

I’m knocked out, I’ve never felt so physically and mentally exhausted, I’m quite stupid with it and long only for bed; but I am happy.

Most people think I paint fast. I paint very slowly.

Apart from painting and gardening, I’m not good at anything.

I’m continuing to work hard, not without periods of discouragement, but my strength comes back again.

My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece

I am following Nature without being able to grasp her, I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers.

I never draw except with brush and paint.

The effect of sincerity is to give one’s work the character of a protest. The painter, being concerned only with conveying his impression, simply seeks to be himself and no one else.

It’s the hardest thing to be alone in being satisfied with what one’s done.

I want to be a Renaissance Woman. I want to paint, and I want to write, and I want to act, and I just want to do everything.

I am not sick. I am broken. But I am happy to be alive as long as I can paint.

If you don’t like the scene you’re in, if you’re unhappy, if you’re lonely, if you don’t feel that things are happening, change your scene. Paint a new backdrop.

To paint is the most terrific thing that there is, but to do it well is very difficult.

I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best.

I paint flowers so they will not die.

I am happy to be alive, as long as I can paint.

It is mostly with your blood, Gala that I paint my pictures