A Week Painting with Les Fauves

To break the routine and to make things a little different this week at art class, we’re looking at the work of Les Fauves. They were a group of painters which included Henri Matisse and André Durain, They were interested in the new colour theories of the nineteenth century. You can read more about them on the Tate Gallery website at this link.

It’s a good idea to try new things from time to time and this was new to me too. I always paint a small demonstration painting at my morning classes and this one took about 15 minutes. That’s very quick but I didn’t want to stop to ponder because if I did, I might just revert to my usual painting style. The term Fauvist means, ‘wild beast’ in French. The colours are wild. It’s a wild way of painting, more concerned with colour than tone.

The whole class did wonderful work and you can see some of it in the gallery below. What to do next week? I was thinking pointilism; what would you like to see?