Matisse In The Garden

I went to my monthly workshop at the Chicago Art Institute on Thursday and was priviledged to view the Matisse collection.  The collection was from a period in his life from 1911 - 1916 approximately, so it was a surprise to me that I was not seeing all of the bright colors that I associated with Matisse.

I immediately began relating his paintings to how I could reproduce them in plants either in containers or in my garden borders.  It is amazing how fast I was able to reproduce the triangles and linear aspects to what Gordon Hayward had spoken about at the Morton Arboretum in regard to Art In The Garden.  I could pick out that important focal point, that object to view from a window (Matisse had several window pictures) and that white that draws your eye into the picture.

Matisse embraced cubism during this period of his painting and actually owned a Cezanne painting of the "Three Bathers" that influenced his paintings from then on.  This was a surprise to me as I never associated Matisse with cubism, but obviously this was a major part of his work.