“I've always been told that I was a painter's painter... What does that mean?... That painters like my painting and the big wide world overlooks it, I suppose?... Well, I know... To me, it would have meant that - this is pre this new rage in buying and selling paintings - that, I think, that the formal values, like light, space, color, all those things that a painting is made up of, as well as the Jacob going up the ladder or Venus on the half shell or something [chuckles] would be what interested the painter. And perhaps the public would want the picture of the Christ child, so to speak. You know what I mean.”

—  Joan Mitchell

Tape number two, side A
1975 - 1992, Oral history interview with Joan Mitchell, 1986

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Joan Mitchell 17
American painter 1925–1992

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