This thing of using unprimed canvas came about when I was living in Monte Carlo in the late 1940s. I had no money – probably I had lost it in the casino – but I had some canvases there which I had already used, so I turned then and discovered that the unprimed side was much easier to work on. And since then I have always worked on the unprimed side of the canvas.

[…] I always feel with a little clever manipulation the Casino would buy our pictures.

I remember when I lived once for a long time in Monte Carlo and I became obsessed by the Casino and I spent whole days there – and there you could go in at ten o’clock in the morning and needn’t come out until about four o’clock the following morning […]

[…] At first I found it too distracting but now I love it and find it very good for pictures falling ready-made into the mind. I paint dozens every week there.

I love being on this coast. With this light, one always seems to be on the edge of the real mystery.