A leading figure of the second generation of Abstract Expressionists in New York City, Joan Mitchell said that although her paintings seemed total abstractions, they were, in fact, "about a feeling that comes to me from the outside, the landscape."

She distinguished herself from other Abstract Expressionists because she had a pre-established design, a single image, to anchor her painting rather than leaving the result to subconscious, totally emotion-based expression.

Mitchell was born and raised in Chicago by parents who were wealthy and socially prominent. Her father was a successful doctor, and her mother a poet, and both supported her apparent early art talent. She attended Frances Parker School, a private high school whose faculty encouraged her interest in painting. For two years, 1942 to 1944, she enrolled in Smith College but was unsettled because she wanted to focus more on art. She transferred to the Chicago Art Institute, earning a B.F.A. in 1948 and an M.F.A. in 1950. There she was much influenced by the work of French modernist Paul Cezanne and Cubist painters.

From 1948 to 1949, Mitchell had a traveling scholarship to France, which was an unhappy time for her because her living conditions were a rat-infested, unheated apartment and her sense of direction about her artwork unfocused.

Joan Mitchell then lived in Greenwich Village in New York City, where she came under the influence of the Abstract Expressionists with whom she socialized at the Cedar Bar. She described them as "a group against the world". She was particularly influenced by the work of Willem de Kooning, Arshille Gorky and Franz Kline and adopted their methods of strong, gestural brush-work and aggressive color.

Joan Mitchell (b. 1926 - 1992)