Joan Mitchell

"I might get an idea [for the start of a painting] sitting looking at the river, or something, or a specific.. ..Yeess. Im sure, yes, Im sure it [the environment] influences me in terms of green and gray and color and.. .I mean, New York light is so different, and it always hits me when I come here [in New York], and it excites me to see great extremes of dark and light and no nuance - which I love. But there the Isle de France [round about Paris] has that, you know, filtered light that is that.. where even on a gray day, the green is very green, and the red is very red.. ..I think walking out barefoot and moving the paintings, being able to move them out of my studio [in Vetheuil] for transportation, things like that have had [influence].. .As well as the landscape. Lake Michigan was pretty important, you know."

"I dont make drips [in her painting] purposely. This drip business is a pile of shit. If I see them, I take them out [of her painting] like cleaning the house."

"Im trying to remember what I felt about a certain cypress tree and I feel if I remember it, it will last me quite a long life."

"[Mitchell wanted in her painting].. the feeling in a line of poetry which makes it different from, a line of prose.. .Sentimentality is self-pity, your own swamp. Weeping in your own beer is not a feeling. It lacks dignity and hasnt an outside reference."

"Light is something very special. It has nothing to do with white. Either you see it or you dont. [George] de la Tour doesnt have light; Monet hasnt any light. Matisse, Goya, Chardin, Van Gogh, Sam Francis, Kline have it. But it has nothing to do with being the best painter at all."

"Oh, early Kandinsky.. [stuck her early] .Well no, they had that at the Art Institute in Chicago, dont forget. See, everybody, to do modern art then [New York, mid-forties], seemed to me, when you were going modern [both chuckle], it was Picasso. I mean, everybody. But I avoided that like the plague. I thought.. .I loved Picasso, but it just wasnt for me.. .Well, I dont! I have some of those [early] paintings from LeLavandou - theyre in storage - and from Mexico. They were Expressionist landscapes, or boats on the beach or something like that, which I still do. Sort of going abstract, going towards.."

"And I came [to New York, 1945].. .It was just after the war and I thought it was a little early to get over there [to Europe]. So I spent the winter under the Brooklyn Bridge, on the Brooklyn side, living with Barney Rosset, and I came here [to New York] to study with Hofmann.. .And I went to Hofmanns class and I couldnt understand a word he said so I left, terrified. But he and I became friends later on. Friends, but I never studied with him.."

"I started in, got it [former Monets house, where he lived 1878 - 1881 in Vetheuil; [Mitchell bought the house and used it mainly first in the weekends] in summer of 67, Yeah, well, and then I started.. .I was still painting at Fremicourt and I remember starting the Sunflowers [series, c. 1969-72], which I saw in Vetheuil and painted them in Fremicourt, you see.. .The thing about [the studio in] Fremicourt, also about St. Marks: I had to roll [large] paintings to get them out, which was a real drag, because of thickness [of the paint which cracked]. And when I started painting in Vetheuil, you can just take the [stretched] paintings out [in open air]. Well, that really changed unconsciously an awful lot of.. .Walk them out stretched, its great."

"Well, I once wrote in - its in Joan Mitchell Paints a Picture, as I remember, Irving Sandler, a long time ago, that I hated the word Nature with a capital N... .But now I accept it, I suppose. I mean, I really like trees and flowers and dogs and all that much more than.. ..a lot of other people [do].. .You know, I really do get pleasure out of.. .Great pleasure. Out of just looking at.. .But I have fun here [New York] too, you know."

"Thats where, I think, I changed for that Grande Vallée subject [a large series of natural paintings, Joan painted during 1982-83], which was really not a subject - the Grande Vallée was a [wild vast] place where this Gisele Barreaux [composer] played with her cousin when they were children, and the cousin, aged 28, died of cancer. And she told me he said to her [when he was dying in 1982], If we could only return to the Grande Vallee once again, as he was dying. I mean, that was what that was all about, so that was a subject of.. .You know, it was the summer my sister died - the same week - and we went to the Manet show. [in 82].. ..when I started the Grande Vallée.. .And I was stuck on a subject, and I thought, This is very true and very simple, and I thought, Shit, Ill paint the Grande Vallée for her. And now, I got her to tell me about it, and it was green and blue, and it was just a vast sort of territory outside Nantes [in Brittany, France]. And so thats how I got started on that whole series."

"Im not religious or anything like that. [But] a little more spiritual something or other.. .A little more feeling. And theres my word again. You know?.. .And I find that.. ..[pauses], I find that uninspiring, and if I hung around too much I might find it very deadly. If I let it enter my studio. And it would be hard not to have it enter."

"Im not so sure I could have done otherwise, but I wish I.. .Im re-going to a French shrink now, and shes helped me a lot. I wish Id gone sooner, because I think women are inclined more than men to be self-destructive, and I really think I had the masochistic medal there for a while, and I, you know, I want to, that I wish I had stopped. I think its also very masochistic to sit and cry in my spilt Scotch for areas in my life that have been very creepy and that I should have cut, left sooner. So whats, thats, I feel sorry about that. But Im getting to [me, be] perhaps more, oh, I dont know, trying to look at that in a more positive way. Maybe I got something out of that too, I dont know.. .Maybe. I mean.. .I feel also uncomfortable about staying in France, but then, if I could only make sort of a.., instead of saying negative, Im too lazy to move, a positive thing, I really like this house. I really like this view. I really like Paris better than New York - or not better, or equally, or differently, or something, which is quite true - instead of sitting - which I can do, I used to do - and missing the country and missing New York, or missing France."