Matisse Paper Cut-Outs

Matisse was an artist who's life was full of mistakes. He selfishly drug his family through hardships in order to fulfill his dream. He was an artwork-aholic, putting his art before his family his entire life. Not until he discovered himself old, sick, and alone does he realize what love really was... Sacrifice. 

Despite his selfishness, I have to admire his guts to produce art that was different than any other in his time. And when he did finally come to the end, despite his immobility and loneliness, he grabbed onto the only thing he had left. He took his God given talent and creatively stayed head above water in his fight for life. When he could not stand up to paint, he laid down to cut! This is when his masterpiece cut-outs were born... In the pit of pain & loneliness came an artistic force of life. He let his art be his last breath. 

I teach my students at school about Master Matisse and introduce them to the method of paper cut-outs. 

As they cut, I do too! 

Intricacy & Purity

Bright  white light robed in a rainbow of color

I love You like no other

Your light fills me with intricacy

And Your blood turns me to purity. 

My limbs gravitate to your radiating beams

My stem growing strength from it's glowing beams.

All others are dying silhouettes on the horizon behind

My life I will never hope to rewind

But grow closer to the eternal finish

Where my spirit will cease to diminish. 

In the shadow of your sacrifice I stand

To your cross I will lift my empty hand.

As light beams of color project from your graven post, 

In this crucifixion cross I mysteriously feel life the most. 

Somehow, In your spirit and invisibility

Is mysteriously the height of all I see. 

For in this casted shadow there is no shame

After tasting your love I will never be the same

In Your shadow there is no dark rigid cold

For in its stretch over this land is where my love has been sold. 

For you bought my spirit with a limitless price

I've lived in darkness and will never go twice. 

For only a fool would walk back to that place

My life of dark shame you have now erased.