| Contemporary Cave Paintings As I go into my studio, I descend a sharp flight of stairs into an unpainted, unfinished dark room that feels like the mouth of a cave. I turn a corner and pass through a small door, which opens into a cavernous space. Despite windows in the adjacent rooms, this space is under the earth. I am in the depths, protected, ready to call forth whatever images accompanied me to this place for creation, away from civilization. I wonder. Were the first cave painters recalling day’s events? Practicing for the hunt? Discussing visually? Identifying objects to one another? And I remember. I joined a handful of other young students gathering at the chalkboard during rainy day recesses—drawing and drawing, discussing ways to represent our ideas. Sheltered from the rain, secure inside our little classroom, were we like those cave painters as we practiced drawing people? And now I paint. As I practice painting am I excavating something more akin to the deep layer of personal unconscious that, for Jung, is symbolized by the cave? Caves are indeed places of storytelling, and places for hidden treasure. Ask Aladdin. Caves are dens of ignorance. Ask Plato. But Zeus was nursed in an Aegean cave, and catacombs were the first cathedrals. In the cave that is my studio as well as my unconscious, I too tell stories and find hidden treasures. I too encounter ignorance and witness the birth of deities. It’s a domain of being so personal it can never be fathomed by consciousness. Art is its only language, as cave painters have always known. |
