intuiting Joan Mitchell

for two weeks i have been reading Joan Mitchell: Lady Painter by patricia albers. i am enjoying it, but it is a hard book to read. Joan self-medicated severe depression with a lifetime of heavy drinking. and like many alcoholics, Joan often got aggressive and mean when drunk eventually pushing everyone she loved away. on the other hand, she was by all accounts brilliant and enormously generous. she was also an eidetic synesthete, like vladimir nabokov–which means she had a kind of photogenic memory that sometimes confused the past with the present, and that she perceived letters, words, people, and music as colors. she was also unfailingly dedicated to her art, and painted almost daily for four decades, claiming that painting is the only thing that gave her equilibrium. not surprisingly, van gogh (who similarly wrestled with mental health) was her favorite painter.  while i read, i often looked up photos of the work being described. hence, for two weeks i have been taking in images of Joan Mitchell’s work. so today, while playing with spent petals from a thanksgiving bouquet, i intuitively made an homage to Joan Mitchell–the petals of the mums and daisies reminding me of the stabbing brushwork in much of  Joan’s work.  after i completed my assemblage, i googled Mitchell’s artwork to see how i did. take a look at East Ninth Street (Joan Mitchell, 1956) and see what you think of my homage to Joan Mitchell. STILL style.

fallen flower petals and leaves