Mischief Makers

Black is the Color, 2019

acrylic on panel  
36 x 36 in

As inspiration for this self-portrait, Joan chose a photograph by famed rock photographer Jim Marshall that graced the cover of her 1970 album “The First 10 Years,” a two-record compilation celebrating her first decade with the Vanguard label.

“Sometimes my pictures feel like a different person,” Joan says, “but this one feels like me.”

And it looks how she actually looked, despite the record company’s efforts to prettify her on the original version of the cover, taking away her natural beauty for some marketing executive’s airbrushed image of her.

“They showed the cover to me and said, ‘How’s this?’” she recalls. “But there was no bump on my nose or bags under my eyes. I said, ‘What happened?’ Put the bump back on my nose and I earned those bags. I was really furious with them.”

She calls this self-portrait, the second of her career, “Black is the Color (of My True Love’s Hair)” after a traditional folk ballad on her 1962 album “Joan Baez in Concert.” While she was painting it, she listened to the silvery soprano on her early records without any ego, as if she were hearing someone else.

“It’s like the way I started my book: I was born gifted,” she says, referring to her 1989 memoir “And a Voice to Sing With.” “I don’t consider that it’s me, so I can say whatever I want about it. The vocals are just stunning.”

And so is this extraordinary self-portrait, as honest and real as the artist who painted it.