Untitled 1962

This untitled painting by Joan Mitchell is a riot of color, a dance of gesture and feeling. I can almost see her there, in her studio, brush in hand, lunging at the canvas. The palette of greens, oranges, and grays feels like a memory of nature, not a depiction of it. There's a beautiful chaos here, an energy that seems to explode outward, and the whites zing across the surface. Imagine how she worked the surface – maybe she'd lay the canvas flat and walk around it, attacking from all sides. What was she thinking? Was she trying to pin down a fleeting emotion, or conjure a landscape from her mind's eye? I see flickers of de Kooning in the brushwork, but Mitchell takes it somewhere else entirely. It’s like she's in a conversation with him, and with all the painters who came before, pushing the boundaries of what paint can do. This piece reminds us that painting is not just about seeing, but feeling, embodying, and engaging with the world.