I created this painting from an anecdote related by Joni Mitchell in an interview with "Rolling Stone" magazine (November 25, 1982 issue). While she was in Jamaica, visiting her friend the movie director Perry Henzell, she went through a sudden and uncontrollable urge to paint. Henzel had offered her one of his walls so that she could execute a mural, providing her with paint in all colours except yellow. Joni Mitchell had then jumped into a car to get to the nearest town (some seventy kilometres away) to acquire yellow, but had realized after she had started, that everything was closed (It was a bank holiday around Mardi Gras).
She then came upon a road worker who was kind enough to let her have some of his yellow paint, which she had been forced to store in an old chipped coconut, encased in an wrecked champagne cardboard bucket that she had found in the car.

Arriving back at Henzel's home, virtually all the paint had been spilt and had sunk to the bottom of the champagne bucket, which in turn had been dislocated, spreading the entire contents around the back seat of the car. However, with the two spoons of yellow paint that remained at the bottom of the coconut, Joni Mitchell had been able to finish her fresco. I had found that story funny, poetic, meaningful and engaging. It epitomised all the feelings that could inspire the work of Joni Mitchell when she wrote joyful witty humorous songs like Raised on Robbery or The Dry Cleaner from Des Moines, for example.

As a celebration of her sunny humor and joie de vivre, it seemed obvious to me -and a real pleasure as well-, to make a painting out of this story in order to offer it to her.