Jessie DeCorsey loves to watch her customers’ reactions when they stroll into the Starbucks on Main Street in Stillwater and come face to face with a life-size painting of songwriting icon Joni Mitchell on the wall.

Often, they stand really close to the painting and gaze at it for awhile.

Meanwhile, DeCorsey, who created the oil-on-canvas painting, pours them a drink from behind the coffee bar.

"People can’t fathom that I painted this," DeCorsey said, smiling proudly. "That the girl that’s serving their coffee is the artist."

Her mural-style painting has captured the attention not only of her customers, but also of Mitchell, who has included a photo and small write-up about DeCorsey’s mural on her website. That’s high praise, considering that Mitchell is an accomplished painter herself and says on her site that she considers herself a painter first and a singer second.

DeCorsey’s rendering of Mitchell measures 8 feet by 4 feet and features different scenes of Mitchell performing. It’s the second prominent painting DeCorsey has made in honor of a legendary musician. The first, a tribute to Paul McCartney, is on display at a Starbucks in Duluth. The 23-year-old artist worked there while she was studying at the University of Minnesota-Duluth.

She said she became interested in painting McCartney after she took an elective class on the music and lives of the Beatles. "I became a big Beatles fan," she said.

When she learned that Starbucks was starting a music label and McCartney would be its first featured artist, she asked her bosses if she could make a painting of him to hang in the coffeehouse. They agreed and last summer, the McCartney painting was unveiled.

DeCorsey, who grew up in North Branch, has since moved back to the Twin Cities. Last month, she finished the Joni Mitchell painting. DeCorsey admits she knew very little about the singer before she started creating the tribute piece.

"Reading her lyrics was really inspiring," she said. "For me also just realizing how many other artists she has inspired, that’s when I really started to love and appreciate her music."

It took DeCorsey 120 hours to create the Mitchell painting. She paints in a bedroom in the Little Canada apartment she shares with her husband, Trevor. Like her tribute to McCartney, this work was made to appear "photo realistic" with life-size images. "I have to paint in this size," DeCorsey explained. "How else do you show someone’s whole life in a single painting?"

The murals are meant to capture not just the performers but their lives. "It’s kind of like a biography, illustrated," DeCorsey said.

Already, she’s doing research on the subject of her next musical icon painting — James Taylor. When it’s finished, it will be displayed at a Starbucks in Hudson, Wis., DeCorsey said.

And she’s not stopping with coffeehouse art.

Her collection "The 14" is on exhibit through the end of the month at the Stillwater Art Guild Gallery, 402 N. Main St. The title refers to 14 saints chosen as "holy helpers" by the Catholic Church during the Black Plague era, DeCorsey explained.

Inspired by those religious icons, she imagined her own group of 14 patron saints for modern times. For example, depicted in her paintings are a saint for disasters, a saint for marital problems and a saint for telecommunications.

Decorsey says that although her two bodies of work deal with different subjects, there is a connection. Both groups of people — legendary musicians and religious icons — were greatly admired by the people of their age.

Allie Shah • 651-298-1550