Lessons of Van Gogh
Artistic Approach

Certainly, imagination is a capacity that must be developed, and it alone empowers us to create a nature that is more exhilarating and consoling than what a mere glance at reality (which we perceive changing and passing quickly like lightning) allows us to see.

I follow no system of brushwork at all; I hit the canvas with irregular strokes, leaving them as they are—impastos, uncovered spots of canvas, and deliberately unfinished corners here and there. I rework and embrace roughness in my technique. The result, I'm inclined to believe, is sufficiently worrying and annoying to challenge the notions of those with preconceived ideas about technique.

While always working directly on site, I strive to capture the essence in the drawing. Then, I fill the spaces within the outlines, whether expressed or not, using simplified tones. For instance, everything representing the ground shares the same purplish tone, the entire sky has a blue tonality, and the greenery takes on either blue greens or yellow greens. In some cases, I intentionally exaggerate the yellow or blue qualities.

Because the Japanese artist disregards reflection, opting to place solid tones side by side – resulting in characteristic lines that naively define movements or shapes.

Better to create naive images akin to those found in old country almanacs, where hail, snow, rain, and fine weather are represented in a completely primitive manner.

Alas, alas, it's just as our excellent pal Cyprien says in "En ménage" by J. K. Huysmans: The most beautiful paintings are those one dreams of while smoking a pipe in one's bed, but which one doesn't make. However, it's a matter of attacking them nevertheless, despite feeling incompetent in the face of nature's ineffable perfections and glorious splendors.

I'm showing you a painter who dreams and who paints with imagination…

We artists in love with order and symmetry, we isolate ourselves and work to define a single thing.

... I never work from memory.

... but I do what I do with an abandonment to reality, without thinking about this or that. 

And I can't work without a model. I'm not saying that I don't turn my back squarely on nature to transform a study into a painting - by arranging the color, by enlarging, by simplifying - but I am so afraid of deviating from the possible and from the just as far as form is concerned.

But in the meantime, I always work from nature. I exaggerate, I sometimes make changes to the subject, but in the end, I don't invent the whole of the painting; on the contrary, I find it ready-made - but to be disentangled - in nature.

... I don't say for color – but as character, as a significant thing, as something in which one has firm faith.

When Gauguin was in Arles, as you know, once or twice I indulged in abstraction, in the rocking chair, a black novel reader in a yellow bookcase, and then abstraction seemed to me a charming path. But that's enchanted territory – my dear – and you quickly find yourself in front of a wall. I'm not saying, after a whole manly life of research, of struggle with nature hand to hand, you can risk it but as for me, I don't want to rack my brains over these things.

... in my work I found danger in these abstractions. And by working quietly, the beautiful subjects will come on their own; it is above all a question of reimmersing yourself in reality without a plan conceived in advance …

​Knowing how to divide a canvas in this way into large, tangled planes, finding contrasting lines, shapes – it's technique – trickery, if you will, but in the end, it's that you deepen your profession and that's good.

... but it's because I'm trying to reinvigorate myself with hard work and fear that abstractions will soften me.

Have you seen a study of mine with a little reaper? A field of yellow wheat and a yellow sun. That's not it - and yet in there, I still attacked this devilish question of yellow. I am talking about the one that is impastoed and made on the spot, not the hatched repetition where the effect is weaker.