Happy New Year to everyone and we hope that you have a very creative year in 2017. We like to give you a little creative challenge every quarter and this coming year, we will be emphasizing various art periods. Each of us will choose a different art period and then challenge you to create felt or other fiber art with that art period as your inspiration.

There is some great information about art periods at the following websites:

Arty Factory

The Art Story

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

I have decided on the art period called Fauvism. I have gleaned all this information from Wikipedia and theartstory.org. The Fauvist movement started in 1899 and ended in 1908, so it was a relatively short period of time.

Wikipedia’s definition: “Fauvism is the style of les Fauves (French for “the wild beasts”), a loose group of early twentieth-century modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong color over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism.”

The Art Story website gives more information:

“Matisse emerged as the leader of the group, whose members shared the use of intense color as a vehicle for describing light and space, and who redefined pure color and form as means of communicating the artist’s emotional state. In these regards, Fauvism proved to be an important precursor to Cubism and Expressionism as well as a touchstone for future modes of abstraction.”

Key Ideas (from theartstory.org)

“One of Fauvism’s major contributions to modern art was its radical goal of separating color from its descriptive, representational purpose and allowing it to exist on the canvas as an independent element. Color could project a mood and establish a structure within the work of art without having to be true to the natural world.”

“Another of Fauvism’s central artistic concerns was the overall balance of the composition. The Fauves’ simplified forms and saturated colors drew attention to the inherent flatness of the canvas or paper; within that pictorial space, each element played a specific role. The immediate visual impression of the work is to be strong and unified.”

“Above all, Fauvism valued individual expression. The artist’s direct experience of his subjects, his emotional response to nature, and his intuition were all more important than academic theory or elevated subject matter. All elements of painting were employed in service of this goal.”

One of the main reasons that I chose this art period is that I thought it would translate well to felt. The simplicity of form with saturated colors sounded perfect for felt. And then we also get to be “wild beasts” while we’re working on this challenge for the first quarter. So I challenge you to look up Fauvism and create a piece of fiber art in that tradition. Go wild with colors and express your individualism!

Please show us your creations over on the forum. We’d love to see what the wild beast in you brings forth.

Don’t forget to sign up for online classes here:

Experimental Screen Printing

Felting Fantasy Fish