What attracted you first to Vincent? "I think it is the classic story of the passionate artist who really and seriously and desperately wanted to do something for the world? There is a key letter I use in the show: How can I learn more, serve some purpose and be of some good. There is that tremendous drive to do something meaningful... The lack of recognition is something any artist can identify with... he was not an easy man, he was difficult... very bright. Spoke fluently five languages." He couldn't win an argument because he'd take both sides?" (laughing)... when Theo came home from work and Vincent wanted to discuss something which was on his mind, he'd tried to avoid it, so that Vincent had to take over his side, too. "In spite of the discussion traditional painters raised about Vincent and other modern painters, Theo was sure that Vincent would become to art what Beethoven had become for music."

About his paintings Vincent seldom was content with, but rather bitter and said: 'This painting never returned what it should'. In the very last letter he never mailed but put it into his pocket before he shot himself and Theo found the letter in his pocket he said: "I am risking my life for it, ..." about the ear: "We will never know. The story actually comes from Gaugin." He never got the recognition from the man he adored so much.
His illness. "I think it was epilepsy. ... He would obsessively because he wanted to get his work finished... He saw art as communicating on mass level. He wanted the average person to see it... There were few artists in Paris whose judgment he respected." Leonard talks about his uncle Mauve and that, when he heard about his death, named a painting he just had finished after him. Theo's name was not on a painting." "Vincent never had a lasting relationship with a woman... He always had a passion for a person who was suffering."