I chose to base my piece on the Fauvism movement. I studied artist Henri Matisse and his piece Woman With A Hat. In one of my earlier pieces, I also had chosen Fauvism as my movement, and one would think that repeating the same movement would not be ideal. However, I could not escape my love for the unnatural colors, irregular shapes, and flatness of the dimensions. I found myself searching for other movements that utilized bold colors and unnatural shapes, but I was always brought back to Fauvism. Fauvism uses complementary colors, flat dimensions, and unusual shapes of natural figures. I have always been intrigued by that style because error is very rare. I focused on Henry Matisse’s artwork because of his spontaneous strokes and rainbow of colors. I found that he pays more attention to the strokes rather than details of shapes, which I found interesting and wanted to capture.

In my piece, I utilized the elements of art including shape, value, space, and color. I used shape in the flatness of the flowers, and showed little dimension. I used value in painting the light and dark tones of the man’s skin, and tried to shows the shadow in his pose. This is the same with my use of space in creating depth with dark green and blue hues. Color was used throughout the whole piece. Pastel hues were used in the background in order to allow the deep values of the green, blue, and turquoise hues to stand out. In addition, I also used principles of art like gradation and variety. Gradation was used in showing the highlights of the skin and blending them to the darker shadows. I used variety to show the contrast between the man and the background.

My idea was to take elements from Matisse’s Woman With A Hat and portray it in my own piece. I wanted to utilize the bright colors and techniques he used in portraying the woman’s face. I feel like my piece was only similar in the use of unusual colors for the skin tone. I wish I made the shape of his face and his body more unnatural looking like Matisse did in his piece. My piece is different in that the figure stands out against the background where as Matisse’s woman blends in. My goal was to create a contrast because I wanted to personalize the piece.