So I fell in love with Joni Mitchell's work without bias or prejudices, I absorbed all of her artistic, literary and musical achievements at the same time, simultaneously immersing myself in her music through the totality of her then released albums.

Therefore, I did not have to separate the Joni from "before" in opposition to the Joni of 1977, who had moved away from the Folk Song fields (a territory to which critics wrongly affiliated her music at the time), towards the lands of Rock Music and Jazz.

Whenever I decided to embark on a series of illustrations inspired by her lyrics and music, I dug randomly into her repertoire without worrying about the period of gestation of the works. My choice was motivated solely by the text at stake (or rather, should I say, what I understood of it at the time…) and the music. It was never due to the relation of concerned work to a particular period of the musician's development, since I loved all her periods indiscriminately (although with age of course, my choices today are much more affirmed and selective).

But often too, it was the music that first drew my attention to the lyrics. In any case, I never shaped my editorial choice according to some composition’s specific link to Folk, Rock, Pop or Jazz Music, and I never sought to respect a chronology in this choice, because I liked all of Joni Mitchell’s works, indifferently.

I therefore produced a set of twelve illustrations, in a collection that I had made in the form of a cardboard box which weighed extremely heavy, because each illustration and its support were assembled with a very thick cardboard. This was topped with a cover, on the back of which figured a French translation of the original English text, opposite to the corresponding artwork. The collection, which I had titled Songs by Joni Mitchell, featured the following compositions :