(from: Joni Mitchell Paintings Interview of Joni Mitchell by Rene Engel © KCSN-FM December 21, 1999)
BC: You have beautiful pearlised greens and iridescent peacock blues that come to the surface in slits. Round About Midnight looks that way: the painting begins to exfoliate.

JM: Well, Cy Twombly did the loops, Jackson Pollock did the drips with the latex spinning out like fishing lines. It all comes down to claiming a new surface. One profound revelation did come when I stood on the floor and threw the paint like Pollock. I was drinking fruit juice and some if it went on in a big glob. It was not attractive, so I grabbed the jar and I rolled over the glob and I ended up with a beautiful surface that I hadn't seen before. So I explored in that direction and came to the conclusion that everything - animal, vegetable and mineral - is muck under pressure. If you were to say, what does everything on earth have in common, it's muck under pressure. It sounds irreverent but it was quite a religious discovery. It was like a unification theory.