Joni Mitchell retired from the music industry a few years ago and returned to her first love, painting. She has exhibited her work here in Los Angeles but usually with very little fanfare.

I found out about her latest show, “Green Flag Song,” in an unexpected place: the Opinion section of the Sunday Los Angeles Times.

Mitchell had nixed doing publicity for this exhibit altogether, but Megan Daum, who writes a weekly column for the Times, happened upon a banner promoting the exhibit on La Brea Avenue. She contacted the gallery owner, Zev Moross, and he set up an interview with Mitchell over dinner at restaurant in West Hollywood:

[Joni Mitchell] said she had had little interest in publicly showing her paintings but that the photographs were infused with political undertones that somehow felt urgent. Though the images, if you look close, range from shots from old movies to talk-show hosts to news coverage, the overall effect has the whiff of brutality.

“The theme of this show is ‘war, revolution and torture,’” she told me. “I was in such despair about the world’s current state of affairs that I didn’t even know where to start. I was taking a lot of landscape photos near my home in Canada. Then I got back to L.A. and suddenly I had this magical TV set.”

Mitchell talked a lot about the photos — “my bedroom lamp is reflected in a lot of them” — and about how she has ideas for more exhibitions. Though she “retired” from music several years ago, she’s writing new songs. She said they were hard in coming, that it’s easy to doubt yourself.

Links:

• Zev Morross Gallery
• Megan Daum