Tahiti 1938

This is Henri Matisse's ‘Tahiti’, a drawing of a mother and child, probably done with ink or graphite. The lines are all hatched really close together, which builds up this beautiful dark tone, and also gives a sense of form and volume to the figures. It reminds me that artmaking is a process. When you get up close, you can really see the texture of the paper coming through. The background is a pale wash of yellow on one side, and pale blue on the other. Look how the artist uses hatching, and this network of lines, to describe the weight and the curve of the mother’s body. If you look at the kid, you can see how the artist has gone back into the lines to make it darker in some areas, giving it more solidity. Matisse is always someone you go back to as an artist, because he's a reminder that it’s ok to embrace ambiguity.