Matisse – Drawing with Scissors

I love the bright bold artworks of Matisse’s paper cut era, so was thrilled to be asked by Tees Valley Museum service to support the Matisse exhibition at Preston Park Museum.

Left - The Snail by Matisse

We ran a session for a SEN school group and another for home educated children. They were brilliant! We dived straight in making collage self-portraits, before spending some time learning about different art forms and exploring the museum collections.

Then it was time to check out the Matisse exhibition and go on a fact hunt to learn about his life and work. We had a lot of discussion around his piece ‘The Snail’, talking about the differences between figurative and abstract art and whether they thought The Snail looked like one or not.

Back in the learning room we explored paper engineering, creating own pop-up artworks in the style of Matisse. The cherry on top was that the young people came out of the day having earned their Arts Award – Discover certificate from Trinity College London.

Well done to everyone who took part!