Painting: Matisse cut outs

I’m particularly looking at his collage work which came at the end of his career. No longer able to paint he could sit in his chair with a pair of scissors and gouache painted paper and cut out shapes. He had said all he could through painting.

This method of pre-painting paper to then cut is something I have harnessed, and I’ve also looked at artists like Clover Robin who uses it in her illustrations and is utilised widely in college.

I will be honest I had no idea that this work was cut up paper. My parents had a piece on the wall for years when I was a child and I didn’t realise that it wasn’t a painting. I thought he had blocked in a simplified his shapes as a painting style. This is why I love exploring artists like this it makes you look closer at their work and discover a type of magic.

I think I recognised and knew his collage better than his paintings. After looking them up I had no idea he had painted this way, then transitioned into such bold shapes and flat colours. It’s a dramatic contrast between the two. It’s like he started a whole new artistic career.

His most recognisable figures here ‘blue nudes’. This blue is so striking and the shapes perfectly describe the figures. This is the sort of movement and energy you try to capture in life drawing classes. Exaggerate the perspective and form and follow the line of the body.

In other work he uses more organic and motif type shapes. A sort of recognisable shape to me. I love the placement of each piece in this collage. And although it still has his blue in there it also uses very complimentary colours.

This piece drew me to it in the way its patterns overlap and it plays around. If you look closely you can see a patchwork of oranges and red to make up the background and then the contrasting shapes over the top sort of intertwining. Creating a kind of fire like dance of shapes. This one is called Mimosa. And was a maquette for a carpet.

Matisse still was able to express such wonderful images in his work through this method. And it really is commendable that he carried on working despite becoming less able. He found a way which he could keep on creating. That’s a great attitude and philosophy to have. No matter what happens to you in life if you are truly passionate about expressing yourself and making work you will find a way, even if it is completely changing your style. It’s still you making the work.

I try my hardest to just make work that I like. To not think about if someone else will like it. It still feels wrong to call myself an artist. And I am still discovering my deep inner style.

I looked at Matisse as a basis for doing portraiture or figurative painting but there are other elements of his work, especially here that I can utilise and take into a more abstract piece or surface piece. The colours and shapes against the white really speak to me. And I will enjoy looking further into his collage period he had.