“I don’t know myself how I paint it, I just sit down with a white board in front of the spot that appeals to me, I look at what is in front of my eyes, and I say to myself: that white board has got to turn into something - I come back, dissatisfied, I lay it to one side and when I have rested a bit, I go and look at it with a kind of awe. Then I am still dissatisfied, because I have that splendid scenery too much in mind to be satisfied. Yet I can see in my work an echo of what appealed to me, I can see that the scenery has told me something, has spoken to me and that I have taken it down in shorthand. My shorthand may contain words that cannot be deciphered, mistakes or gaps, and yet there is something left of what the wood or the beach or the figure has told me, and it isn’t in tame or conventional language derived from a studied manner or from some system, but from nature herself.”
-vincent van gogh
(from a letter to theo van gogh- 3 september 1882)
