«Matisse Dreams»

In 1941 Henri Matisse had major surgery, and afterwards he often worked from a bed or a wheelchair. Painting became hard. So he began cutting shapes out of paper he had painted in flat colours, and he called it drawing with scissors. That is how the book Jazz appeared in 1947, and how the Blue Nudes followed in 1952.

That story is the starting point of this Matisse pop art painting.

The background is black and rough, with outlines pressed into the paint. A woman sits in profile, turned to the left. Her face is cut by a horizontal strip that has slid out of place, and a few black bars sit across her features. The body is bare and almost entirely covered with Matisse-like motifs: a blue figure on her arm, a green and yellow face on her shoulder, a ring of orange dancers on her thigh, a small man in blue near her shin. Thick white swirls of paint sit across her like flowers, tied together with pink lines. Tiny red figures crouch along the edges of the canvas.

On the left there are blocks of green, orange, blue, magenta and pale mint. They remind me of Mondrian. I like how a calm grid sits next to a body covered with cut-out dancers.

Matisse painted The Dance in 1910, with its orange figures in a circle, and Warhol later took the idea of flat bright colour into pop art. I wanted to see what happens when the old cut-out world is worn like a tattoo, and the face glitches like a stuttering screen.

This is my original pop art painting, oil and acrylic on canvas, 120x90 cm, from 2023. It suits a living room as statement wall art.

Most of my original paintings are already in private collections, but I paint originals to order in any size. To ask about this one, message me on Instagram or by email. A hand-finished lithograph of this work also exists, and you can order it the same way.