Zorah on the Terrace 1912

Henri Matisse painted ‘Zorah on the Terrace’ with oil on canvas, and the blues in this piece are singing to me! You can almost feel the brushstrokes building the scene, one layer at a time, full of curiosity and wonder. I wonder what Matisse was thinking when he laid down that first stroke. Did he have the whole picture in his head, or was he just following his intuition, letting the colors guide him? What I see is how the flat blocks of color create a powerful sense of depth. The blues create this strange and enveloping space, and the yellows add a surprising warmth to the whole composition. Then there are the slippers, the fish bowl. These are a couple of props that are not exactly part of the scene, they are a little on the side. They're making me think of Bonnard, of course. Matisse’s process is like a conversation, not just with himself but also with all the painters who came before him. Each painting is a question, an experiment, a way of seeing the world anew.