PLAY.
I’m so inspired by Matisse’s use of cutting and pinning as a “system for thinking about and expanding the possibilities of shape and composition.” As he explained: “the scissors discover the positives and negatives, reversals and inverses, the organic relations between shapes, their generation of one from another. One geometry leads to another and still another in an ever-lengthening chain”
Beginning with an Arch:
I like to create limitations to expand within. The endless possibilities of shape can feel too vast and even overwhelming otherwise. Beginning with an arch gives me a defined framework to start from. From there, the options open up! Thanks to my husband’s handiwork, I have arch templates in a range of widths to guide the initial arch cut.
"It is no longer the brush that slips and slides over the canvas, it is the scissors that cut into the paper and into the colour. The conditions of the journey are 100 per cent different. The contour of the figure springs from the discovery of the scissors that give it the movement of circulating life. This tool doesn’t modulate, it doesn’t brush on, but it incises in." - Matisse