In the continuum of space and history, everything is connected. Musing about a second theme for the Hockney-initiative of our local photography club, I wanted to explore the relationship between David Hockney and Vincent van Gogh. Van Gogh’s art and Hockney’s art have a lot in common. Endless inspiration from nature, the landscape, the use of brilliant colours and the expression of ‘the soul’ of a tree, a road, a hill.

It had to be olive trees. Saint Rémy is the village where Vincent loved the beautiful light. I walked through the countryside where Vincent had walked, saw the landscape he had seen. Not far from the institution where he spent a year after his mental breakdown I found an olive tree orchard. I imagined how Vincent would have seen it, and how David would have filled that view with his colours.

There it was: a symbol of van Gogh’s Provence, with a Hockney filter over it and expressed in my photographic language.