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Image of La Chatière is © Estate of Joan Mitchell.

Joan MitchellJoan Mitchell was born in Chicago in 1925 and earned a BFA from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1947. In the early 1950s she participated in the vibrant downtown New York art scene and spent time with many other painters and poets. It was during this time in New York that she began to paint in a way known as Abstract Expressionism.

In 1955, she moved to the city of Paris, France, and in 1967 she moved from the city to a house in a small town near Paris called Vétheuil.

At Vétheuil she had more space to paint and was surrounded by nature. Her house sat up on a hill overlooking the River Seine. The property had many big trees and gardens in which she grew all kinds of plants and flowers, among them sunflowers, which she loved in particular. The companionship of her dogs was very important to Joan; she owned many in the course of her life and their names can often be found in the titles of her paintings.

Joan Mitchell painted throughout her entire life. In addition to oil paintings, she made drawings, especially with pastels and watercolors, and did several kinds of printmaking. Mitchell died in 1992.

Her work & La ChatièreJoan Mitchell’s artworks distill and express her feelings and memories of people, places, and things in her life that were important to her. The myriad things that comprised and moved within her environment – animals, water, the sky, trees, flowers – generated memories and images that went into her paintings. Mitchell was an abstract painter, which means she was interested in depicting the feeling or essence of something rather than the thing itself.

Mitchell lived in France when she painted La Chatière, titled after the French word for a cat door (the flap inserted at the base of a larger door which allows cats to come and go at will). Although her pets at that time were dogs, she had owned cats in the past and clearly had powerful memories of them. Mitchell loved animals and closely observed their nature, the way they moved, and the feeling of being in their presence.

The paint in La Chatière suggests movement and energy, and it also contains a sense of aggression, perhaps even violence. The dense greens and blacks at its center create a depth and backward push, in contrast to the large patch of salmon pink which comes forward and demands attention. Broad, loose strokes at the top of the painting evoke the swaying tail of a cat, while shorter and more furtive marks elsewhere evoke clawing and scratching. Yet in spite of all this energy and motion, if you look at it long enough the painting also communicates a sense of stillness, of a moment frozen in time. As Mitchell once said, a painting that works is “motion made still, like a fish trapped in ice.” The central density of the canvas is offset by the unpainted areas in each of the canvas’s four corners, which provide a welcome sensation of breath, lightness, and stillness.

Questions for discussion1. Mitchell applied paint to this canvas in many different ways. Can you find areas where she used a wide brush? A thin brush? A rag? Drips and splashes? Paint directly from the tube?

2. Mitchell painted this canvas in layers, and had to wait for the paint to dry in some areas before she could paint another layer on top of the existing layers. Can you tell which colors she applied first, second, and so on?

3. Can you think of words that describe the actions and personalities associated with cats? Can you describe any parts of this painting with the same words?

4. This painting is over six feet high, so Mitchell had to reach to apply paint to the top of the canvas. Can you sense the movement of her body in the brushstrokes?

5. How do you feel when you look at this painting? Can you identify what about the painting makes you feel this way?

Medium & TechniqueOil paint is made of pigments – substances, often dry powders that have rich, strong color – mixed with vegetable oils. Different colors of paint can be mixed together to create new colors, and oil paint can be thinned with turpentine and other liquids for a more watery, translucent effect. Joan Mitchell selected and placed the colors in La Chatière

very carefully, using an extensive palette of warm and cool colors and sometimes squeezing paint directly from the tube onto her canvas. Although the painting conveys a spontaneous and almost explosive feeling of energy and movement, Mitchell worked slowly and deliberately. She would stand back from the canvas and look at it for long periods of time, decide where the next mark should go, then approach the canvas to place color quickly and confidently. She used many sorts of tools and techniques, including wide and narrow brushes, rags, her fingers, and drips and splashes while painting her canvases. New York, 1957. Photo Rudolph Burckhardt

Joan Mitchell with kitten Minoulouche, 1949

Cats in Joan Mitchell’s studio, 1949.

JOAN MITCHELL, Trees I1992, color lithograph on two sheets57 x 82 inches, 34 + proofs

Image of Trees I is © Estate of Joan Mitchell.

Joan MitchellJoan Mitchell was born in Chicago in 1925 and earned a BFA from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1947. In the early 1950s she participated in the vibrant downtown New York art scene and spent time with many other painters and poets. It was during this time in New York that she began to paint in a way known as Abstract Expressionism.

In 1955, she moved to the city of Paris, France, and in 1967 she moved from the city to a house in a small town near Paris called Vétheuil.

At Vétheuil she had more space to paint and was surrounded by nature. Her house sat up on a hill overlooking the River Seine. The property had many big trees and gardens in which she grew all kinds of plants and flowers, among them sunflowers which she loved in particular. The companionship of her dogs was very important to Joan; she owned many in the course of her life and their names can often be found in the titles of her paintings.

Joan Mitchell painted throughout her entire life. In addition to oil paintings, she made drawings, especially with pastels and watercolors, and did several kinds of printmaking. Mitchell died in 1992.

Her work & Trees ILandscapes and elements of the natural world – trees, water, sky, flowers, weather – were very important to Joan Mitchell. Her memories and feelings about places she had been, and things she had seen and experienced, fill her artwork. She felt and expressed enormous gratitude toward the landscapes that surrounded her, and one can sense her feelings for them through her artwork.

When asked by an interviewer what inspired her to paint, Mitchell replied: “When I was sick, they moved me to a room with a window and suddenly through the window I saw two fir trees in a park, and the grey sky, and the beautiful grey rain, and I was so happy. It had something to do with being alive. I could see the pine trees, and I felt I could paint. If I could see them, I felt I would paint a painting.”

Mitchell created Trees I just before her death in October of 1992. Although her health was failing, she was able to create a series of powerful images inspired by her memories and love of landscapes. This print is a confident, large-scale work, almost five feet tall. Ken Tyler’s advanced printing techniques assured that each layer of Mitchell’s original drawing was freshly visible. Bold gestural lines of black overlay bright yellow and red in a large diptych that is simultaneously powerful and fragile. Sections of expressive vertical lines floating in white suggest a landscape of trees in the fall, each with their own energy, and Mitchell’s gestures evoke both movement and stillness. One can sense wind blowing through swaying trees, but also the rooted verticality and stability of the trees as they reach upward.

The co-mingling of life, death and nature were on Mitchell’s mind, and she said of time spent creating art: “I become the sunflower, the lake, the tree. I no longer exist.”

Questions for discussion1. Can you find traces of Joan Mitchell’s hand in this work? Do you see any fingerprints? Can you trace any of her movements?

2. What colors did Joan Mitchell and Ken Tyler use to create this work? Can you guess which color was printed first? Second? Last? Does the overlap of these colors create any new colors? Why do you think Mitchell chose to use these colors?

3. Think about the effect of sunlight filtering through the branches and leaves of a tree. Is there any part of this print that reminds you of that kind of light?

4. How is the quality of line similar or different in the two sides of the print? What parts of the line remind you of the natural world?

5. How do the two sides of this print relate to each other? Does the work feel differently if you only look at one side and not the other?

Medium & TechniqueJoan Mitchell created the Trees series of lithographs in collaboration with trusted friend and master printmaker Ken Tyler in Mt. Kisco, New York. Lithography is a type of printmaking that traditionally involves drawing with an oil-based medium on a stone slab. When printing, the stone is first sponged with water and then an oily ink is rolled over the drawing. The ink

naturally adheres to the oily areas and resists the wet stone. A lithographic print is then created by placing a sheet of paper on top of this inked slab and rolling both slab and paper through a large press. For Trees I, created in 1992, Tyler gave Mitchell flexible, textured mylar plates to draw on, rather than stone slabs. This material allowed Mitchell to create lithographs as naturally as if she were drawing with pastel on paper.

Joan Mitchell and Ken Tyler, circa 1970s

Joan Mitchell in Vétheuil, France, circa 1984

Linden tree (tilleul in french) at Mitchell’s home in Vétheuil, France

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Image of Untitled (pastel) is © Estate of Joan Mitchell.

Joan MitchellJoan Mitchell was born in Chicago in 1925 and earned a BFA from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1947. In the early 1950s she participated in the vibrant downtown New York art scene and spent time with many other painters and poets. It was during this time in New York that she began to paint in a way known as Abstract Expressionism.

In 1955, she moved to the city of Paris, France, and in 1967 she moved from the city to a house in a small town near Paris called Vétheuil.

At Vétheuil she had more space to paint and was surrounded by nature. Her house sat up on a hill overlooking the River Seine. The property had many big trees and gardens in which she grew all kinds of plants and flowers, among them sunflowers

which she loved in particular. The companionship of her dogs was very important to Joan; she owned many in the course of her life and their names can often be found in the titles of her paintings.

Joan Mitchell painted throughout her entire life. In addition to oil paintings, she made drawings, especially with pastels and watercolors, and did several kinds of printmaking. Mitchell died in 1992.

Her work & UntitledWilliam Wordsworth, a poet whom Joan Mitchell admired immensely, said that poems were “powerful emotions recollected in tranquility.” The same words could be used to describe Mitchell’s artwork, including this untitled pastel drawing, which she created in the last year of her life. It unites the seemingly opposite sensations of intense emotion and quiet tranquility.

While this pastel drawing retains the sense of gesture and movement that permeate Mitchell’s paintings, it also presents a gentleness and delicacy, a more heightened sense of fragility, than paint on canvas can convey. Her lines feel simultaneously agitated and controlled, tactile and optical, energetic and still. Forms seems to emerge and dissolve simultaneously, hovering around a dense central core. While some areas are densely layered with multiple colors – often blended and smudged by Mitchell’s fingertips – others feel luminous and airy. The tooth of the paper is visible, and one can almost sense the paper breathing around the areas of dense color, its white surface activated by its relation to the colors.

Mitchell was an abstract artist; she did not intend for this pastel to “look like” a specific place, person, or thing. Instead she was interested in feelings, and memories of feelings related to a place, a tree, a flower, a friend, her dogs, Lake Michigan. This work certainly evokes natural forms – one can easily detect the sensations of trees and landscapes. Its blues evoke skies and water, its greens grass, trees, and other vegetation. It could also suggest, through its vertical format and dense central mass, a human portrait. But more strongly than any allusion to the literal world, it exudes intense and dense emotion and feeling.

Questions for discussion1. Which different colors of pastel did Joan Mitchell use in this drawing? Can you guess which colors she applied to the paper first? Can you find areas where she blended colors with her fingers?

2. Can you imagine the movement of Mitchell’s hand as she made this drawing? Choose a colored line and describe how it moves your gaze around the drawing. Does it lead your eyes up, down, diagonally, across and/or in curves?

3. Some parts of this pastel are dense with marks, while others are virtually empty. Why might Mitchell have composed her drawing this way? Can you find areas where she layered white on top of other colors? Why do you think she did this?

4. What feelings do you think Joan Mitchell was trying to express? What do you see that makes you think that?

5. This piece is untitled. If you could give it a title, what would it be, and why?

Medium & TechniquePastels are made of powdered pigments – substances, often dry powders that have rich, strong color – compressed with a binding agent into sticks, much like chalk. There are various types of pastels, including dry pastels, which can be either soft or hard, and oil pastels, which are more buttery and dense. Mitchell preferred traditional materials, so she used high quality dry soft pastels in her drawings on paper in order to achieve the richness of color so important to her work. The dry softness of this medium allowed her to create areas of texture, smudged transparency and bold opaque lines. The powdery, ephemeral, and delicate nature of the pastel is inseparable from the lyrical quality of the work.

Pastels in Mitchell’s studio, 1979

Joan Mitchell in studio, photo by David Boeno, 1983

Joan Mitchell with her dogs, photo by Edouard Boubat, 1984