Joan Mitchell Paints a Symphony
La Grande Vallée Suite
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Published by Calkins Creek (2025-02-25)
Celebrate the creative process of pioneering American abstract painter Joan Mitchell in this beautifully illustrated STEAM picture book, perfect for all kinds of young creators.
It’s 1983, and American artist Joan Mitchell is in her studio outside Paris, transforming her emotions and memories into a symphony of colors and shapes. Inspired by her friend’s description of an idyllic hidden valley in France, Mitchell creates 21 massive paintings—her Grande Vallée series —bursting with vibrant, energizing hues. But she doesn’t paint the valley’s flowers and meadows. She paints a feeling about them—abundance, freedom, liveliness—creating a harmonious blend of drips, splashes, and brushstrokes in rainbow colors. When the paint dries, it's time to share her valley with the world.
This inspiring, poetic picture book about an influential yet lesser-known American artist provides a snapshot of a creator who deserves as much acclaim as better-known Abstract Expressionists like Jackson Pollock or Willem de Kooning. Author Lisa Rogers shares both the despair and delight Mitchell experienced throughout her career, while acclaimed illustrator Stacy Innerst’s bright artwork captures the movement and energy of Mitchell’s work, as her paintings develop from page to page.
It’s 1983, and American artist Joan Mitchell is in her studio outside Paris, transforming her emotions and memories into a symphony of colors and shapes. Inspired by her friend’s description of an idyllic hidden valley in France, Mitchell creates 21 massive paintings—her Grande Vallée series —bursting with vibrant, energizing hues. But she doesn’t paint the valley’s flowers and meadows. She paints a feeling about them—abundance, freedom, liveliness—creating a harmonious blend of drips, splashes, and brushstrokes in rainbow colors. When the paint dries, it's time to share her valley with the world.
This inspiring, poetic picture book about an influential yet lesser-known American artist provides a snapshot of a creator who deserves as much acclaim as better-known Abstract Expressionists like Jackson Pollock or Willem de Kooning. Author Lisa Rogers shares both the despair and delight Mitchell experienced throughout her career, while acclaimed illustrator Stacy Innerst’s bright artwork captures the movement and energy of Mitchell’s work, as her paintings develop from page to page.
Book Details
Format:
Hardcover
Price:
24.99 CAD / 18.99 USD
Published: 2025-02-25
ISBN: 9781662680373
Imprint:
Calkins Creek
Page Count: 40
Trim Size: 11-1/2 x 10
Grades:
Grades 2-5
Ages:
7-10 years
★ "An exploration of Joan Mitchell’s passionate, color-drenched, large-scale abstract paintings. Innerst’s illustrations are fittingly exuberant, rendering Mitchell in grayscale against expressionistic brush strokes and drips in warm yellows, blues, deep greens, and pinks... simply marvelous." —Kirkus Reviews, starred review
“American abstract expressionist Joan Mitchell’s dynamic style and approach are the subject of this lyrical, exuberantly colorful picture-book biography…Rogers' spare text emphasizes her focus and determined imagination as she works on the paintings, but it’s Innerst’s bold illustrations, filled with thick, bright brushstrokes in riotous color alongside angular, black-and-white drawings of the lanky artist in her studio, that showcase the power of her work.” –Booklist
