Blue Territory: a meditation on the life and art of Joan Mitchell

Blue Territory is a poetic immersion into the life and art of Joan Mitchell, the great American abstract expressionist painter. A contemporary of Jackson Pollock and Willem De Kooning, she is not as well known as her male counterparts because she was a woman and also because she spent most of her working life in France. Still, in 2013, Bloomsburg Business listed Mitchell as the bestselling female artist of all time. When asked to talk about her paintings, Joan Mitchell often responded, “If I could say it in words, I’d write a book.” Here is her book. At once unique and universal, Blue Territory is at its core an exploration of love and life, and what it means to love - and live - what you do. Meticulously researched and lyrically written, it will appeal to anyone interested in passionate engagement with the world. The book eschews images so as to allow the words to form them, thereby freeing the reader to imagine the paintings, much as Mitchell would have to do before picking up her brush.