Tonight's picture was taken in April of 2006. Mattie was visiting his favorite restaurant for Easter Brunch. I must admit that I did not realize that we were going to be visited that day by the Easter Bunny! If I had, I would have been prepared and could have given Mattie some warning. When this bunny approached us, Mattie was quite hesitant, and as you can see he wanted me to lift him up and move him away. But after we reassured him that this bunny was okay, Mattie actually got into the visit. This was where Mattie and I differed as children. At Mattie's age, I would have dove underneath the table and stayed there until the bunny left the vicinity. I was very scared of all costumed characters and frankly am not wild about them even now as an adult. With Mattie, you could reason with him, and once you did, he bought into the experience!
Quote of the day: The chief function of color should be to serve expression. ~ Henri Matisse
This morning was like a comedy of errors. First of all I woke up absolutely exhausted from another week full of work. Yet I had to pull it together to teach a kindergarten art session at Mattie's school by 8:30am. Though I left 30 minutes to get to the school, I wasn't counting on a motorcade of police cars blocking off the Memorial Bridge, the route I usually take to get to the school. So literally I had to re-route myself to the campus. Being directionally challenged this was most unfortunate and I landed up being 15 minutes late. However, I had Peter call Donna, the teacher to let her know.
When I got to the classroom, Donna was talking to the children about what it feels like to be "stuck" and frustrated. I knew exactly where the impetus of this conversation came from.... the children learned I was stuck in traffic. So most likely Donna wanted them to reflect on feeling stuck. The wonderful part about this is Donna and I play off of each other very well and Donna said...... Mrs. Brown, I wonder if Matisse ever felt stuck in his life and what ways did he use to help him with that feeling? The perfect segway into my two hour session. But it was actually brilliant because in many ways Matisse used art to help him get UNSTUCK during many points in his life. How?
Matisse came and discovered art late in his life. Well late in comparison to Picasso. Picasso was basically born an artist and painted as a child. Matisse was studying to become a lawyer until one day he developed appendicitis and had to recover at home for weeks. I explained to the children that when one was recovering at home back then, there was NO TV, NO computers, NO video game, and so forth. So the way Matisse's mom occupied him was she gave him some paper and box of colored pencils. The rest was history. This was where his love of art began, while recuperating from an illness and dealing with boredom and recovery. He was stuck and art helped him get unstuck. But it was much more than that. Matisse never felt passionate about law and only was pursuing this career for the sake of his father. Art awakened something inside of him.
Obviously as one of the greatest painters of the 20th century, Matisse is now known as one of the originators of Fauvism (which translated from French means 'Wild Beast,' it is painting objects and people with colors that may not seem realistic or true to nature.... such as painting an apple purple for example). Matisse did not care about reality (like Picasso), he was far more interested in what the color evoked. The feeling! By the time we finished today, the children understood that Matisse was born in France, he is considered a master of color, the father of Fauvism, and he was unlike Picasso because he was very neat, organized, and painted during the day. However, like Picasso his art style was unappreciated in France and even made fun of, was influenced by one of his parent's, and had a love of birds.
In his mid-70s, Matisse developed cancer. I did not explain this to the children. I just mentioned that he was ill and wheelchair bound. Again, such a set back could have caused him to become stuck. After all, he was no longer physically able to paint, something he spent his whole life doing and what he loved most in the world. Yet when all else failed, Matisse's creativity took over and he developed a new art form in his 70's called cut outs, or painting with scissors. Basically he used paper and scissors and with those two things created amazing masterpieces (for a photo of Matisse with his cutouts: http://www.henri-matisse.net/cut_outs.html)! If you have never seen a Matisse cut out in a museum, I encourage you to find one! They are wall sized, NOT canvas sized! They are beyond impressive.
In any case, the children had the opportunity to make their own cut outs today! I supplied them each with a blank piece of foam core and precut papers. I tried to cut creatively, and many of the papers were cut in Matisse like shapes! Below you will see a few of the finished products!
I ended the lesson with pain au chocolat! In other words, I made croissants stuffed with chocolate. Given that Matisse was from France, I always try to do a themed snack! Needless to say, the snack was devoured!
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