[MUSIC PLAYING]
If you're going to be an abstract painter,
you always have to really stay close to the idea of drama.
It's not a story. So where's the drama?
The drama's in things like the paint.
The space.
Whether it's thick, whether it's thin.
Whether it's dry, whether it's wet.
I like Joan Mitchell because she was just fearless.
Someone who is really strong-willed very bright.
And the paintings show it.
New York, you know when I came to town, '68
there were lots of rules.
People had really, really strong beliefs
in what you should be doing, what you shouldn't be doing.
People would have—
you know, have fistfights over talking about painting.
Well, it is a tough painting, beautiful painting.
She's beginning to be more and more confident.
As a young painter, she's spending a lot
of time in the studio,
and these paintings are really work, work, work, work, work.
She demands a lot from the work,
and she just keeps pushing and pushing the work.
The more you look at it,
the more see the orange, the blue. You know, the color.
How are blue and red having a conversation?
And this painting has it all.
The scale of it, even how frontal it is.
The color here is masterful in terms of the weight.
You don't read the color just as a color.
You read the color as the mark—you know, as a gesture.
As an abstract painter, what happens is—
like even myself I go into the studio
I don't know what I'm going to do.
Once you put a mark down the canvas,
then your relationship. One, two.
One, two, three.
I put a blue down.
I have blue, I have red, I have green down.
And the paint's taking over.
When I put a color down, I'm there. You know what I mean?
There's no hesitation. I don't put a color down
and then...and then get scared about another color.
If I put a green down, and I feel yellow,
I put the yellow down. You know what I mean?
If it doesn't work out, I'll just shift.
You gotta be a master of your craft to make
those kinds of shifts.
You're thinking about the things that make painting.
How dense it is, how light it is, how open it is.
Where it is in space.
How much is about landscape?
How much is not about landscape?
How much is about body? How much is about paint?
How much is about light? How much is about color?
And if you're a process painter,
you're making the paintings tell you what to do.
After awhile the painting's telling you, I need this, I need that.
I need that. I need this, I need that.
There's no such thing as a bad day in the studio.
I don't have any bad days.
A bad day is a good day.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
There's something about this kind of scale.
Where it's just that physicality in terms of how
as a human being you relate to it.
You have to walk past it.
You know, you can't take it in just with your head.
You take it with your whole body.
You never get tired of looking at it
because every area is just so active.
She's such a physical painter.
And it has a great rhythm.
I mean, the thing about this, these kinds of
balls of color, you could say— whatever you want to say about it,
it's just great movement.
How she brings the drama between the—
you know, you could say the dark colors
and the light colors.
A little bit of like push and pull, but
she doesn't worry about whether it's going to be gorgeous
or not gorgeous. Or beautiful.
She's right on the edge of things being kind of really—
they're sort of nasty, they're sort of beautiful.
Sort of like careless, and then they're very careful.
She uses everything.
As a painter, you have to use everything.
And the gravity of it all. I mean, she loves the drips
because the drips really show the gravity.
Here's a good example of her mixing color right on the canvas.
Because you see the, you know—
the gesso or the primed canvas through here.
Because the big thing about painting is
having good transitions.
And so she comes back here and she takes the blue—
This is a little red over top of it.
Dry paint.
And the great thing on this painting too,
which I love about the late paintings,
is the size of the brush.
She has a really big thick brush.
It's not about whether this is right or wrong,
or beautiful or not. It just feels good.
If it feels good, it stays.
She's so sure of herself.
Thinking about subject matter, which is always very hard
for me early on to figure out what was my subject matter.
I like Joan Mitchell because
she wasn't really scared if it became a landscape or trees.
She knew what she wanted from landscape.
She knew what she wanted from paint.
She knew what she wanted from space.
She knew what she wanted.