Joan Mitchell's Concluding Vocabulary

Joan Mitchell, Little Weeds II, 1992, color lithograph on three sheets, 9 1/4 x 21 inches

We happened upon a really interesting show of Joan Mitchell prints in Litchfield, Connecticut, over the weekend. It featured Mitchell's later prints, and it was quite energetic and inviting. Motivated to look further into her work, I went to the Joan Mitchell Foundation website and came upon this exquisite print, created in the last year of her life. Looking at it I thought of something my friend Judith Trepp, a creator of minimalist abstracts, told me. "I attempt in my individual 'language and words,' she said 'to bring forth a non-verbal alphabet." I think all artists do this, but especially those whose work tends toward abstraction. If this is true, what was Joan Mitchell saying just months or weeks from her death? Maybe that life is a dance and weeds aren't always weeds.

Click on the Judith Trepp label below for my various posts on Judith's work.