"The Seed of the Areoi" - Paul Gauguin

[Eva Libre]

"The Seed of the Areoi", (1892)
Paul Gauguin

"I am an artist and you are right, you are not mad, I am a great artist and I know it. It is because I am such that I have endured such sufferings. To do what I have done in other circumstances would make me a ruffian. Which I am no doubt for many people. Anyhow, what does it matter? What distresses me most is not so much the poverty as the perpetual obstacles to my art, which I cannot practice as I feel it ought to be done and as I could do if relieved of the poverty which ties my hands. You tell me I am wrong to remain far away from the artistic centre. No I am right, I have known for a long time what I am doing, and why I do it. My artistic centre is in my brain and not elsewhere and I am strong because I am never sidetracked by others, and do what is in meMy actions, my painting etc., are criticised and repudiated every time, but in the end I am acknowledged to be right. I am always starting all over again. I believe I am doing my duty, and strong in this. I accept no advice and take no blame. The conditions in which I am working are unfavourable, and one must be a colossus to do what I am doing in these circumstances."
- Paul Gauguin.

'Letter to his Wife Mette' March, 1892, reproduced in M. Prather & C. F. Stuckey, eds., Gauguin, A Retrospective, New York, 1987, p. 179.