Yesterday I went to the Matisse cut out exhibition at Tate Modern and it was a wonderful exhibition. It struck me how much of this work is textile like; the cut marks can be seen as evidence of the ‘hand’ in the making process. Two videos of him working showed how he held the coloured paper in his left hand in the air and cut with large tailor scissors with his right hand in a very free way. He often pinned the papers together so that he could move them around with tiny pins smaller than dressmaking pins. All these little elements for me related to the cutting and shaping that we do so much in our own work.
Many of the larger assembled pieces had a distinct link with the way that African American Quilts are put together and I was fascinated by the way that he had put these together using juxtapositions of scale and proportion – just like a ‘quilt’
kayswancutt 
Kay, I agree with you about Matisse working like a textile artist. I have felt that for quite a long time. I just re-read the essays in the book Matisse, his art and his textiles this past winter and it points out how he was born in a region of France renowned for tapestry weaving, and that later in his life he collected world textiles and used them as props in his paintings. He hung them on his walls and looked at them all the time. He thought like a textile artist.
Wish I could see that exhibition. Lucky you.
x