Neil Kathol Visual Art

With hard edges

These evolved from my ongoing study of Matisse including his late “Cut-out” works (in particular the shapes he cut out of his hand-painted papers). He arranged his cut-outs on walls in various studios. So the first step I took was to paint an illusion of cut-outs arranged on walls, on to gessoed wood panels. To further the cut-outs which are physical objects even if flat, I used thick, conspicuous paint – thick oils applied with a large brush to add light-reflecting profiles. The resulting panels were something like cut-outs on (smaller sections of) walls. With some I have stopped at that. But with others of these, due to the conspicuous shapes acting a bit like objects, I felt the picture would interact well with actual objects and operate as a collage, “combine” or mixed-media painting.