"I didn't wake up one morning and decide that I wanted to become the best known artist in America," he says. "I set a series of goals as far as I could see and as high as I could reach."
His first goal was to become a better artist.
"I challenged myself that each painting would be a superior image. I then made a conscious decision that I would be the most recognized artist in Kentucky."
That was a lofty goal for a man who had never sold anything for more than $200 up to that time.
"I won't pretend that I understood goalsetting, but my ultimate challenge made me set some kind of time frame on a sequence of events that would allow me to get where I wanted to be. I learned later that that was goalsetting."
First he and Linda opened a gallery in Berea in 1980. "We just believed in each other so we stepped out on faith," he says with a grin.
That same year Mitchell introduced his first limited-edition print.