Cave Art

Primeval art resurrected.  This seven-work series aims to re-create the primal power and beauty of scenes from caves of Altamira (14,500 B.C.) in northern Spain and Chauvet-Pont-d' Arc (30,000 B.C.)  and Lascaux (15,500 B.C.) in southern France.  Cro-Magnon shaman artists brilliantly coalesced the elements of abstract visual language -- composition, color, texture, line, shape, form, and pattern in their simplest expressions -- to imagine reverential masterworks of the lives, movements, and spiritual energy of the animals of their world.  Most of the paintings of my series, ironically -- or appropriately, were fashioned while in my own "cave" during COVID lockdowns and throughout an 11-month-long isolating illness. In my interpretations, a stucco base affects the uneven surface and cauliflower texture on the limestone caves.  My other techniques are specified as updates to inventive prehistoric technologies.  

30,000 B.C. Redux:

Facing Horses,

Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc Cave, France

Media: Mixed - Stucco, Acrylic, and Oil on Panel

Size: 30" X 30"

Profiles of equine dignity.  Shaman artists lined and shadowed the proud horses and a background lion's hind with charcoaled burnt wood; I used a purplish black oil paint.  The choice of the original cave location capitalizes on the stone's natural cracks for a design effect, here created with incisions in the stucco base.  I emboldened the original rock hues of ochre and rust with an abstracted melange of shapes in a calico of colors -- white, celery, buttery yellow, brown, caramel, and cream.

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SOLD - 30,000 B.C. Redux: 

Charging Lionesses, Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc Cave, France

Media: Mixed: Stucco, Acrylic, and Oil on Panel

Size: 40" X 33" 

Raw animal energy explodes from a far right section of a pride of lionesses rushing to kill bulls and cows (not shown).  Choosing a flatter, smoother light ochre- and cream-colored portion of the limestone wall to draw the scene, the shaman artist overlayed bodies and lines to create perspective and evoke the pack's density and powerful forward surge.  The individual faces and personalities of each lioness attest to the artist's keen eye and memory.  To lend a more contemporary flair, I chose blue-grey and muted cerulean colors to line and shadow the figures.

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30,000 B.C. Redux:

Lions, Bison, and Venus, Chauvet-Pont-d'Arc Cave, France

Media: Mixed - Stucco, Acrylic, and Oil on Panel 

Size: 36" X 24" 

A cave triptych of primal instinct conveyed through storytelling, strong lines, and iconic imagery.  Is the wandering lion pride in the cave's innermost sanctum (left) looking for prey, water, or new territory?  Are the lion and bison on a projected outer rock (right) casing out the pride out of self-protection -- or just plain curiosity?  The oldest image, "Venus and the Sorcerer" -- a goddess figure integrated with the lion's and bison's legs -- unifies feminine and masculine energy.  In my rendition, built-up stucco and light/dark color contrasts affect the perspective of the location's three dimensions.

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14,500 B.C. Redux: Bison, Altamira Cave, Spain

Media: Mixed - Stucco, Acrylic, and Oil on Panel

Size: 24" X 24"

The power and the glory.  This enigmatic bison transcends over a melange of scores of Altamira's original ceiling images.  Arresting, steady, and upright, he shines among those galloping or wallowing in grounded fetal positions.  My re-creation further electrifies his radiance with a striking contrast between velvety red ochres, cabernet reds, and violets against a yellow ochre stone-like stuccoed background. Framing techniques of a golden white body halo and renderings in four corners (clockwise from top left: bison hind, wallowing bison, and receding bottom ledges) evoke an enshrinement and honor the shaman artist's possible intentions.  Cultural experts hypothesize that the cave's works were part of rituals to contact otherworldly spirits. If so, this beauty of a mighty beast was likely the chief channel.   

Detail - Bison 

Stylized threads of cracks and a stucco base affect the authenticity of the cauliflower texture and natural stresses of the cave's limestone walls.  The cracks are woven in and out throughout the bison's body for full effect.  

17,000 B.C. Redux: The Black Stag,

Lascaux Cave, France

Media: Mixed - Stucco, Acrylic, Oil on Panel

Size: 24" X 20" 

Magnificence in reality and art.  A 1,500-pound stag flaunts the largest antlers ever known - 12 feet in diameter and 90 pounds.  In the shaman's stylized rendering, colossal crowns with strange tines arch backward to heighten the body's curves and create forward movement.  A distorted eye, looking back, and reddish exhales suggest fear and fury as he charges away.  Although the shaman drew the stag with black charcoaled wood, I chose an understated chocolate set against a dignified palette of stone, creams, and yellows.  Gold leaf affects a precious metal embedded in the original rock, a final touch for this regal animal, now extinct in reality but living forever in art. 

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15,500 B.C. Redux:

The Great Black Cow, Lascaux, France 

A black cow dominates horses wandering in the background.  The shaman artist painted her with horsehair brushes in pigment made with pulverized manganese rock and bone marrow.  Flint and bone tools incised white lines from the limestone; here, white stucco texture pops out from under my oil paint.  The shaman blew paint from inside hollowed bones to create sprinklings; here, cloth pats of paint delicately laced colors over a solid surface (though varied colors on the cow's back suggest peeling paint). To enrich the palette of the original stone's browns and ochres, I blended in tones of olive, salmon, and bright orange. 

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Detail - The Great Black Cow

The white stuccoed acrylic paint popping up from under the oil paint re-creates the original shaman artist's use of etching of the limestone. The squares at the cow's feet were the shaman's earlier exploration of abstract patterning.  And that splash of purple?  Pure genius!

15,500 B.C. Redux:

Sharing the Land, Lascaux Cave, France

Media: Mixed - Stucco, Acrylic, and Oil on Panel

Size: Triptych - 95" X 24" 

A sweeping panorama of peaceful co-existence between animals living on the land.  The narrative was created through animals moving in opposite directions and images of various sizes and colors, some as superimpositions, some in the distance, for short and long perspectives.  The original frieze was painted on a smoother cave wall sandwiched between ochre- and stone-colored rocky eaves and dark craggy ledge, both created here by excessive buildup of stucco.  The piece is to be displayed in entirety, but each of the following panels (30" X 24" each) can be appreciated as a stand-alone painting.  Four paintings in one!

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Detail - Sharing the Land 

Panel 1

Size: 30" X 24"

Stampeding horses overpower a big bull image.  Various gaits distinguish personalities.  Two run.  One gallops.  Another leaps.  The original horses were black, but I colored each differently --  red, tortoiseshell, gold - to differentiate them further.  The shaman artist set apart the bull's head and shoulder with dotting.  Patches of metal were probably imbedded in the real rock, conveyed here with paints of metallic copper, silver, and gold in the eaves and throughout, including a mysterious equid on the left.  An impala -- or unicorn?  

Detail - Sharing the Land

Panel 2

Size: 30" X 24"

Stand-out images: the stags, does, and red cow.  My interpretation attempted to recapture the delicacy of the original deer figures with fine lines and use of oil and metallic oil paints.  A glaze was used to superimpose the smaller red cow over the bigger bull's belly and legs.  Further spotlighting the red cow, a natural rock crack shooting down from the right eave onto the cow's shoulder plays like a serendipitous abstracted bolt of lightning.      

Detail - Sharing the Land

Panel 3

Size: 30" X 24"

A cow and bull are omnipresent.  Their large proportions dominate.  Strongly angled forms radiate energy.  The bull's power strengthens with brawny shoulder and hind created by the wall's sharp ochre- and gold-colored natural protrusions.  Buttressing the couple's force are the size contrasts of the tiny stag and horse overlays on the cow's shoulder and a smaller cow with calf in tow at the bull's feet, an image that seems to capitalize on the wall's imbedded rose-colored patch.  The same pink hue is also seen in the ledge's projected arch (bottom left).