The sea was a surprise - it was bluer than I expected. I thought there would be lots of green tones but it was blue with hardly a trace of warm tone. The gradient of the sea was very intense, a masterclass in simplicity to paint. The sea here really could teach people how to paint.

The energy of it too was palpable. The gravity and the rush to paint it was a huge wave in itself.

The orange trees were everything I needed after a grey winter in England. My need for sunshine and citrus is only becoming stronger.

You don’t have to work hard to be an artist here. It’s a help yourself buffet of paintings; beautiful light, strong shadows, pink skies and a colour pallette that even the colour wheel couldn’t measure.

I’m not a sunset seeker - I think they are hard to convey in paint. But here I was compelled to take the risk, to reach for it.

Going to the Matisse Chapel, I wondered what I’d get out of visiting. It was the fact that he took art off the canvas, put it in a sacred environment and deomstrated the importance of human creativity through time.

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