Zuzu Art Trail: Painting with Scissors

By S.

Whilst on holiday in France we spent a day at Musée Matisse, Le Cateau-Cambrésis. The museum was very welcoming, particular with S and A, giving them pencils and an artist's pad to take with them around the museum.

We started with the Matisse rooms although there were exhibitions on Herbin and Genevieve Claisse to name but two.

S was keen to start drawing and stopped at a picture to draw some flowers in a vase.

We have been sharing the books "The Little Matisse" by Catherine de Duve (ISBN 9-782960-040678), "Jazz" by Henri Matisse (ISBN 0-8076-1291-X) and "Snail Trail" by Jo Saxton (ISBN 978-1-84780-423-4) at home and it was very exciting to see many of pictures in the books hanging on the gallery walls.

Whilst walking through the gallery it was clear to see how Matisse's style changed over his life. We spent a long time in the cut outs section.

A was very quick at spotting the pictures from "Jazz" hanging on wall. He could identify shapes and patterns in them too.

S enjoyed the sculptures and wanted to draw them.

Later in the day we had a our own go at painting with scissors.

A has only been using scissors for the last couple of months so he needed high levels of concentration to make snips on the card and to cut pieces off.

S was quick to get cutting and began to arrange his shapes on the paper before using large amounts of glue to stick them into place. He wanted to expand his picture beyond the scope of the A5 paper, and why not?! In fact his words were "I wish we could do this forever!", as he chose further colours to cut and stick.