JOAN MITCHELL referring to the artist's isolation from today's society, says, "Painting is a very elite thing. Who wants to look at painting anymore?  Most people would rather go to the movies or embrace their VCRs. And most artists would rather do art than really take time to see it."

Mitchell has lived in France since 1959. In 1968 she move to Vetheuil 35 miles northwest of  Paris. Mitchell's house, on avenue Claude Monet, overlooks the Seine. with its numerous islands and flowers. The home of  Mitchell's gardener is where Monet lived from April 1878 to November 1881. The view extends past her garden beyond the sunflowers, and on the otherside of the garden wall lies a cemetery with the grave of  Monet's wife.

Mitchell was born in Chicago in 1926, the daughter of  physician James Herbert Mitchell and poet Marion Strobel. Her mother was an editor of  Poetre magazine, which published such writers as T. S. Eliot and Ezra Pound. As a child Mitchell got to know these poets, along with Edna St. Vincent Millay, Thornton Wilder, and Dylan Thomas.

In 1942 Mitchell entered Smith College, studying English, though continuing to pursue her interest in art. She left after two years and enrolled at the Art Institute of Chicago to concentrate on painting. Graduating with a BFA in 1947, she won a traveling fellowship that would finance a visit to France for the next year. At this point she moved to New York, intending to study with Hans Hofmann. She visited his class, was intimidated by his teaching methods, and never went back. Yet she was impressed by his painting. Hofmann's impact on Mitchell has been long-lived. From her Couseous 1960-62 an ambitious potpourri of paint application to the early 70s triptychs stacked with rectangular areas of saturated color, Hofmann's no nonsense laying on of paint was a legacy that Mitchell built on.

Throughout her career Mitchell's literary connections have been as strong as her artistic ones. Married in 1949 to editor and publisher Barney Rosset, whom she had met in high school (they divorced in 1952), she helped support his establishment of Grove Press. Through him she met Samuel Beckett, who became a close friend and whose writings she continues to value very highly. Her ongoing interest in literature is evident in titles for paintings. Harbor master (1957) was named for a poem by Frank O'Hara, whom she had met in 1952. Mitchell relates Mooring (1971), an unnervingly beautiful and complex painting, to T. S. Eliot's poem "Marina," which deals with death and immortality.

Mitchell spent much of the 50's in New York, living on St. Mark's Place on the Lower East Side. Mitchell was well known by Willem de Kooning and Franz Kline, and in 1951 she was asked to take part in the famous Ninth Street Show organized by the Artists' Club and Leo Castelli. In 1952 she had her first one-woman show in New York, at the New Gallery on West 44th Street. ART News described the show as a "savage debut." She had another solo exhibition in 1953 at the Stable Gallery, where she would have seven one person shows through 1965. In the early '50s, Mitchell studied Northern Renaissance and 19th century art at Columbia University, and French at New York University, while she was still attending sessions of  The Club.

By the mid-'50s Mitchell was recognized as an important New York artist. At the suggestion of her friend and psychiatrist Edrita Fried, she spent the summer of 1955 in France. At this time she met the Canadian painter Jean-Paul Riopelle, who would become her companion for nearly 25 years. Less than two years after she and Riopelle parted, Mitchell would have to face the death of a Friend and, the next year, that of her sister. Edrita Fried (1981), the largest work Mitchell has produced, is a four-panel painting named in memory of  her friend. Another 1981 painting, Pour ses malinois, which refers by implication to Mitchell's sister an expert on Belgian sheep dogs and golden retrievers a fiery orange-pink canvas whose vigorous strokes sweep across a fluctuating field

Mitchell dedicated a painting to her dog, the 1984 Pour Iva, a solemn yet bounding painting with a preponderance of deep blue-violet. George Went Swimming at Barnes Hole but It Got Too Cold, a 1956 painting, was named for Georges du Soleil, a poodle Mitchell once owned. The work was the subject of a 1957 Art News feature, "Mitchell Paints a Picture,'' by Irving Sandler.

Mitchell. whose mother edited Poetre magazine has been passionately interested in literature since she was a child. In her years New York, she was influenced by Philip Guston, Mark Rothko, and Franz Kline. The power of  Kline's large unstretched black-and-white paintings, hanging in his Ninth Street studio was consuming. It was 1950, the time of his first one-man show. As to his legendary charm, she comments: "Sitting at the White Tower with only coffee and doughnuts, he could turn it into an elegant occasion. Franz had a way of using fantasy to cover tragedy." A Kline influence, while not persistent, can be seen in some Mitchell paintings from the period 1956-59. Wide, dark brushstrokes laid down quickly in one of  Mitchell's finest smaller works 14 O'Clock (1959) oil on canvas, 73 by 69 inches are reminiscent of  Kline's methods.

Replete with bright yellow, orange, and thick whites, it brings to mind Jackson Pollock's late work, such as Scent (1955). With the shadow of Monet cast over her surroundings and some of her work, Mitchell has often sought to distance herself from the Impressionist master. She has said of him: "He was not a good colorist. He isn't my favorite painter. There's a much heavier conscious influence from Cezanne. I never much liked Monet." One of  Mitchell's work from 1976, Straw, is a true descendant of Monet's "Water Lilies"  when looking at Monet and Mitchell side by side. But Mitchell's painting are far removed from his pictorial concerns an her works are filled with energetic gestures.

In 1969 she painted the "Sunflower" series, large radiant canvases. (Two Sunflowers, a 1980 diptych packed with juicy orange and green ) Mitchell explained her attraction to sunflowers in an interview with philosopher and critic Yves Michaud: ''Sunflowers are something I feel very intensely. They look so wonderful when young and they are so very moving when they are dying. I don't like fields of sunflowers. I like them alone or, of course, painted by van Gogh."

Even though Mitchell's work has entered major museums and private collections in Europe and the United States, it does not bring spectacular prices. In spite of her continuous productivity as a distinguished artist, single canvases from the '80s are priced at around $65,000. Large four-panel works are in the $140,000 range. A good-size untitled painting (ca. 1958) of superior quality sold at Sotheby's in May of  1989 for $96,250 including the 10 percent  buyer's premium. A 1964 oil only slightly smaller, but more modest in quality, went for $33,000 at Sotheby's.

What she admires in art and seeks in her own work is "painting that keeps you here, not painting that takes you elsewhere." Artists exemplifying the former are Vermeer, Mondrian, and Cezanne.

Mitchell often paints at night, sometimes listening to music playing "Kathleen Battle Sings Mozart" or Kiri Te Kanawa'  interpretation of  Richard Strauss's "Four Last Songs." "I've always been interested in music, poetry, painting,". She reads a lot and recommends Rilke's Letters on Cezanne. As a significant view of art, she offers Anton Ehrenzweig's The Hidden Order of Art.

Recent work underscores her indebtedness to old masters like Van Gogh and Czanne while probing her own environment and psychic state. No Birds, from 1987-88, evokes van Gogh's Crows Over the Wheatfields, perhaps his last painting; Ready for the River, also from 1987-88, is a general reference to suicide. Such work offers more than an exciting visual encounter its honesty and risk-taking insure a transcendent moment.