The only merit I have is to have painted directly from nature with the aim of conveying my impressions in front of the most fugitive effects.

Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment.

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.

Color is my day-long obsession, joy and torment. To such an extent indeed that one day, finding myself at the deathbed of a woman who had been and still was very dear to me, I caught myself in the act of focusing on her temples and automatically analyzing the succession of appropriately graded colors which death was imposing on her motionless face.

My only desire is an intimate infusion with nature, and the only fate I wish is to have worked and lived in harmony with her laws.

What could be said about me...a man to whom only his painting matters? And of course his garden and his flowers as well.

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