After all, we are not French and never can be, and any attempt to be so is to deny our inheritance and to try to impose upon ourselves a character that can be nothing but a veneer upon the surface.

It's to paint directly on the canvas without any funny business, as it were, and I use almost pure turpentine to start with, adding oil as I go along until the medium becomes pure oil. I use as little oil as I can possibly help, and that's my method.

Yes, linseed oil. I used to use poppy oil, but I have heard that poppy oil is given to cracking pigment too, so I use it no longer.

More of me comes out when I improvise.

I use a retouching varnish which is made in France, Libert, and that's all the varnish I use.

In general it can be said that a nation's art is greatest when it most reflects the character of its people.

I once got a little camera to use for details of architecture and so forth but the photo was always so different from the perspective the eye gives, I gave it up.