Exploring pattern - Matisse




This week, the 16th January, we looked at the work of Henri Matisse (1869 – 1954).

 He was born in France. He studied to become a lawyer but became an artist at age of 23, after his mother encouraged him to paint when he was recovering from an illness.

 He used lots of pattern in his paintings, inspired by patterned fabrics he collected from different places from his world travels.

We looked at several examples of his work throughout his five decade career and discussed how his art progressed from representational to abstract and how he took inspiration from other artists, such as Van Gogh and Seurat.  We also talked about how when he was unable to paint he was able to adapt how he worked when restricted by old age and illness.

His paintings were colourful and full of energy. However later in his life when he became ill and used a wheelchair, he invented a new art form – paper cuts – he called this ‘ drawing with scissors’ which he arranged into attractive compositions.

great example of random shapes 'drawn with scissors'

Now - what feels right?  Let's see........

Using positive and negative shapes

Fabulous shapes ready to be revealed!




Moving into more organic shape making, we randomly cut our folded or unfolded paper – and using both the positive and negative shapes, arranged these – similar to Matisse – into random or repeat pattern compositions. We had a great time exploring and testing out our ideas which we included in our sketchbooks.  Certainly colourful and full of energy!


“Even although it was hard, I enjoyed it! “ Kaitlin Y4

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