Don't copy nature too closely. Art is an abstraction; as you dream amide nature, extrapolate art from it and concentrate on what you will create as a… - Paul Gauguin

In my figures [of his famous painting 'Vision After the Sermon'] I have achieved a great simplicity, which is both rustic and superstitious... ..In this picture the landscape and the struggle [between Jacob wrestling with the angel ] exist only in the imagination of the people whom the sermon has moved to prayer. That's why there is a contrast between the people, depicted naturally, and the struggle in its unnatural and dis-proportioned landscape.

Copying nature — what is that supposed to mean? Follow the masters! But why should one follow them? The only reason they are masters is that they didn't follow anybody!

I tried to make everything breathe in this painting: faith, quiet suffering, religious and primitive style, and great nature with its scream.