I grew up with a Van Gogh print. My friends hated it. They sneered at the disheveled orange flowers writhing from their misshapen bronze vase. And why was snow falling, they said, against the blue background when the setting was obviously inside?

When I explained it was done on purpose and it wasn't snow anyway, they shrugged. They much preferred the shepherdesses on their parents' walls.

The frustration was bad enough for a young Van Gogh fan in the 1960s. How much worse it must have been for the creator of this extraordinary reality 80 years earlier.

One of the reasons I wanted to visit Provence was to tread the same earth as the artist who'd affected me so deeply as a child - and again later as an adult enthralled by the letters to his brother Theo.

None of his paintings remains in Provence. They've all flown off with multi million dollar price tags to New York, Paris and Tokyo. Yet I was hoping something of the man would linger.

Rows of cypresses still march across the landscape. The sky is relentlessly blue, wheat fields dazzling yellow. An occasional farm worker trudging across a field can almost be mistaken for a Van Gogh figure.

Scrunching my eyes I could sometimes imagine myself inside one of his masterpieces. But I wanted a deeper connection.

A good start, we imagined, would be the tourist office in Arles where Vincent lived briefly with Gaugin, painted Caf Terrace on the Place du Forum and sliced off his ear. However, we were coldly informed English speaking tours don't begin until high summer.

In the meantime, Arles offers bull fighting in the Roman amphitheatre. When a world weary ticket seller warned it was "to the death" we opted for the self guided amphitheatre tour with no bull.

Van Gogh seemed to have shrunk away from Arles with its pancake stands, Japanese tourists and bull fighting van braying tunes from Carmen. I could hardly blame him.

We had better luck in the smaller town of Saint-Remy where Vincent spent his last year but one. Through the tourist office, we discovered Marie-Charlotte Bouton who takes English speaking tours every Wednesday.

With silver hair and long flowing skirts, Mme Bouton is one of those eternally feminine French women who ooze elegance from every fingernail. A Van Gogh groupie since the age of 16, she moved from Paris to Saint-Remy to be close to his soul. It was reassuring to meet an even worse case of Vincent mania.

Mme Bouton was waiting for us at the entrance to the psychiatric hospital where aged 36 he asked "to be locked up as much for my own peacefulness as for that of others."

The asylum of Saint Paul de Mausole is a picturesque scattering of stone buildings among magnificent gardens. A hundred female patients are still housed there.

They all paint, as do the doctors and nurses. No doubt they hope artist's ghost will inspire them. Unlike Van Gogh, some manage to sell their work - though the ones we saw on display were bereft of his genius.

Mme Bouton stood in front of an olive grove, a very ordinary bunch of trees. She then held up a print of Van Gogh's version of the same scene. He'd transformed it into a symphony of gold, green and silver. His painting possessed more movement and vitality than the real thing.

She took us inside to see Vincent's bedroom, except it wasn't his exact room because that part of the building is closed down. Nevertheless, the iron bed, the simple wooden chair the barred window looked just like the painting.

Gazing through the bars over rows of lavender bushes stretching towards hills he'd painted, I sensed his despair. This prison was a devastating contrast to the outside world's beauty. Nevertheless, he worked furiously here - 180 paintings in 18 months.

Today his condition, temporal epilepsy, would be "cured" with a combination of drugs, surgery and counseling. In 1888, there was nothing but a straitjacket and confinement during the terrible attacks. Yet would those masterpieces have emerged from a stable, contented mind?

We wandered outside past another familiar view of the building - Elizabeth Taylor owns the original - to an old quarry. After the others headed back, I stood alone above a grotto of giant rocks.

Cicadas sang. Sun danced on cypresses, wind spun olive leaves to liquid silver. In this peaceful spot away from the postcards and tour groups the real Vincent was only a breath away. Helen's email address: notnuts@bigpond.com