What started as me going through some old art books in search of inspiration, while at home on lockdown, grew into a journey of experimentation and slowly into new series of work. When in search of ideas revisiting vintage catalogues has always been my favourite exercise. I came across Matisse’s paper cut outs which sparked a desire to incorporate elements of decorative and cheerful manner into my monochromatic monotypes. As I was working on these new paper pieces I was also looking at Japanese 80’s posters designs. I admire the Japanese ability to constantly reinvent their traditional aesthetics of reserved compositions and colourful broad geometric shapes. Borrowing from what is essentially paper graphic arts of simplified shapes, cut outs and colourful rhythm I created a hybrid of my own. Beginning with a line drawing or an imprint of a big bold shape I continued to add layers and textures spraying paint, smudging crayons and scribbling energetic pastel lines, working my way through the compositions which morphed into abstract landscapes. While the result is a remote reference to its name, this series begun as a cerebral conversation with Matisse, aiming to marry broad large considered shapes with expressive spontaneous energetic mark making converting it into a colourful visual landscape collages. One of the submitted pieces is named “Etoile over Nice”, the idea of a bold star in the night sky with colours inspired by the Mediterranean landscape of the Côte d’Azur where Matisse spend his final years. To view the whole series click here.
