My garden is a slow work, pursued with love and I do not deny that I am proud of it. Forty years ago, when I established myself here, there was nothing but a farmhouse and a poor orchard...I bought the house and little by little I enlarged and organized it...I dug, planted weeded, myself; in the evenings the children watered.

The richness I achieve comes from nature, the source of my inspiration.

Zaandam has enough to paint for a lifetime.

For me, the subject is of secondary importance: I want to convey what is alive between me and the subject.

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

These landscapes of water and reflection have become an obsession.

When you go out to paint, try to forget what objects you have before you - a tree, house, a field....Merely think, here is a little square of blue, here an oblong of pink, here a streak of yellow, and paint it just as it looks to you, the exact color and shape, until it gives your own naive impression of the scene before you.