Trees 1991

Curator: This is Joan Mitchell's "Trees," painted in 1991. The medium is oil on canvas. Editor: My first thought is 'joyful blizzard'. There’s this crazy energy of upright forms but blurred at the edges. The whole painting feels like it’s humming with vibrant but somehow muted color. Curator: Interesting observation. Structurally, Mitchell divided the canvas into two distinct panels, each presenting a different cluster of vertical, gestural strokes. It's fascinating how she plays with the dual aspect. Editor: Absolutely, a sort of call and response happening on the same plane! She suggests landscape without giving us representational clarity. It’s not a photographic impression, but an emotive residue of experiencing a copse of trees, maybe near her home in Vétheuil? Curator: Exactly! I love how you brought in the element of place; this landscape theme, it's recurring in Mitchell’s oeuvre. Formally, the heavy impasto of the oil allows the paint to function almost sculpturally, which adds dimension to this potentially flattened field of vision. Editor: You're spot on with the impasto! It adds this very tactile sense. Though largely non-figurative, I see suggestions of the corporeal - like a forest bathing session turned ecstatic vision. A raw immediacy! Curator: Speaking of tactility and perception, I like to think about it through the lens of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. He invites a phenomenological read. I see not just representation of form here, but a deeply sensuous embodiment of being in space and nature. It's very visceral and lived. Editor: It feels very elemental - water, air, wood. Almost synesthetic. I see "Trees" as a late-career celebration of life, rendered as a dance of color and feeling, like the whole history of feeling in a simple series of brush strokes. Curator: Well said! It strikes me how Mitchell manages to evoke so much emotional depth. Each time I spend time with "Trees," I glean a different personal reflection and, for me, this piece is inexhaustible.