Workshop artistic inspiration:
After deciding that I was going to explore 3D paper manipulation I felt the obvious next port of call while searching for artistic inspiration was to look at those artists who used paper in their art works.
For me the first obvious stop was Henri Matisse:
In the late 1940s, Henri Matisse turned almost exclusively to cut paper as his primary medium, and scissors as his chief implement, introducing a radically new operation that came to be called a cut-out. Matisse would cut painted sheets into forms of varying shapes and sizes—from the vegetal to the abstract—which he then arranged into lively compositions, striking for their play with color and contrast, their exploitation of decorative strategies, and their economy of means. Initially, these compositions were of modest size but, over time, their scale grew along with Matisse’s ambitions for them, expanding into mural or room-size works. A brilliant final chapter in Matisse’s long career, the cut-outs reflect both a renewed commitment to form and color and an inventiveness directed to the status of the work of art, whether as a unique object, environment, ornament, or a hybrid of all of these.
The image below is the artwork that I chose to chat about with the clients of Rose Cottage as I felt is had both representational and abstracted elements.
The second image I chose to discuss is the one below created by Juan Miro. Even though it is not purely a collage just using paper I wanted to talk about how mixing media with paper, drawing and pastel work could really add to the beauty of a work. This piece like the one by Matisse also allowed for a discussion not only about the bright colours and colour combinations but the automatic improvised drawing elements. Our conversations were very lively that day in Rose Cottage, the clients loved the bright colours and had lots of different ideas about what the Miro piece might represent.
Workshops kindly funded by the Adelaide Health Foundation, Community Health Initiative Scheme 2019
Supported by The Alzheimer’s Society of Ireland. Special thanks to Alan Carrick, Mary Mooney, Silva Schwer and all the staff, clients and friends of Rose Cottage.
Art and Dementia projects 