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.
I want to paint the air in which the bridge, the house and the boat are to be found – the beauty of the air around them, and that is nothing less than the impossible.
I do what I can to convey what I experience before nature and most often, in order to succeed in conveying what I feel, I totally forget the most elementary rules of painting, if they exist that is.
Perhaps it’s true that I’m very hard on myself, but that’s better than exhibiting mediocre work… too few were satisfactory enough to trouble the public with.
I still have a lot of pleasure doing them, but as time goes by I come to appreciate more clearly which paintings are good and which should be discarded.
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.
