It's Henry...in English...

I love to ask Jack open-ended questions about his day. You never know what he'll feel like sharing. Some days it's "I don't know" or "I don't remember". Today, Jack felt like sharing.

me: Jack, what was one really good thing that happened at school today?

Jack: (thinks for a second) Oh, I know. Art class! We learned about painting and how you can paint wherever you want and it can always be different.

me: That sounds cool...

Jack: Wait...so there's this artist we learned about, and I can't remember his name, but he was from a long LONG time ago, like in the 1960's or something...and I think...wait...his name was Henry in English, but I don't remember his real name...

me: Was his last name Matisse?

Jack: Huh? Ummm...I think so but his first name was Henrymatisse or something.

me: In French it's Henri Matisse. Matisse is his last name.

Jack: Yeah that's it! Henri! I can't remember that. How do you know about him??

me: I learned about him in art school just like you're learning about him.

Jack: So, he got really sick and was in bed a lot and his mother bought him paints and then he really really liked painting and I think he was famous or something. But then he got old and his nurse said he was too messy with the paints, and you know what? He tied his paintbrush to the end of his cane and painted on the walls!

me: Did he get in trouble?

Jack: Yeah, he got his brush tooken away.

me: Oh, it was taken away?

Jack: Yeah, taken. I said tooken...haha... So you know what? He got paper and scissors and did paper cutouts when he couldn't paint anymore.

me: He made nice pictures with his cutout paper, didn't he?

Jack: Yeah. It was really cool. Can we do cutouts tomorrow?

me: Absolutely.

I just remembered a small coffee table book that we have about Matisse's cutout period. It's still in a box in the basement. I'm going to run down and grab it now before I forget. I'll let you know what Jack thinks of it.