Joan MitchellSides of a River I 1981

Mitchell began her career in New York, where she was closely associated with the Abstract Expressionist movement. Much of her work was concerned with her experience of landscape. Although these prints are heavily abstracted, there are strong traces of the natural world, as the title indicates. Dense bands of marks at the top and bottom of the paper can be seen as river banks. The lightly-worked areas between suggest the water of the river itself.