Joan Mitchell on Death

"That's where, I think, I changed for that 'Grande Vallée' subject , which was really not a subject - the 'Grande Vallée' was a place where this Gisele Barreaux played with her cousin when they were children, and the cousin, aged 28, died of cancer. And she told me he said to her , 'If we could only return to the Grande Vallee once again,' as he was dying. I mean, that was what that was all about, so that was a subject of.. .You know, it was the summer my sister died - the same week - and we went to the Manet show. .. ..when I started the 'Grande Vallée'.. .And I was stuck on a subject, and I thought, 'This is very true and very simple,' and I thought, 'Shit, I'll paint the Grande Vallée for her.' And now, I got her to tell me about it, and it was green and blue, and it was just a vast sort of territory outside Nantes . And so that's how I got started on that whole series."