Joan Mitchell (1925-1992) defied labels throughout her career. Often identified as a “second-generation” Abstract Expressionist painter, Mitchell engaged with the New York School in the 1950s while developing her style of painting rooted in what she ambiguously defined as “memories and feelings of landscape.” Reveling in these notions of feelings and memories of the surrounding world, Mitchell distinguished herself from other Abstract Expressionist painters interested in the subconscious and primal desires by interpreting her lived experiences with consciously applied gestural strokes to her large canvases. These distinctions based on technique, subject matter, and motivation merit analysis beyond her usual comparison to, and under the same parameters as, the Abstract Expressionist painters who preceded her.

What does it mean to paint a feeling? How can memory and feelings be inscribed within a work of art? To what extent does the surrounding world filter a lived experience and affect future interpretation of memories of a particular moment? How can an artist shift between abstraction and representation in attempting to convey lived experience? Integral to answering these questions in relation to Joan Mitchell is an analysis of her technique, an understanding of how her means and motivations for painting differed from other Abstract Expressionist painters, and an inquiry into the inception of Abstract Impressionism, a short-lived period during which critical acclaim for her paintings soared before her near disappearance from art historical discourse in the 1960s.

Mitchell’s career has only recently reemerged in the public eye. Little attention has been paid to understanding the function of lived experiences- memories and feelings- as conduits for her motivation to paint, and no critical discourse has fully examined why her career rose to critical acclaim in 1955 yet was neglected during the 1960s. Mitchell’s paintings shifting between representation and abstraction showcase a nuanced understanding of the varying bounds of feeling and memory, revealing an artist with a keen perception of the human condition, of the ability to poignantly elicit emotion through her evolved visual language.