matisse

went to the matisse exhibition at the Tate. I didn't really know much about his cut out work but I found the exhibition really inspiring.
I love the way he depicts objects and scenes, reducing them down to lots of different shapes and colours, it makes the pieces really striking. The mix of bright colours, and how he uses colours for different meanings rather than the colours usually assigned to particular objects, it really gives his pieces so much life and energy.

I watched a video on how he went about making them, and the speed he has while cutting the shapes is amazing, how neat they are really doesn't matter, its more about the composition and the contrast in colours.
The exhibition showed the original cut outs and the prints that were put into books, and I felt the originals were far more impressive. In the originals you can see all the layers of the paper, the colours are bolder and it felt so raw and energetic. I think a lot of the personality of the pieces is lost through print.
I feel his work relates a lot to the style in which I have been working in recently, I have moved on from detailed pieces and found I have really enjoyed deconstructing what I see into shapes and simple colours, not concentrating too much on individual elements.