I have been researching, and experimenting with rock and cave art for over 30 years. I have always been fascinated by paleolithic cave art and the lost world it shows. As I’ve worked with stone as an art medium I’ve come to love the warmth, unpredictability, and uniqueness of each piece of stone. I try to continue the tradition of rock art as a beautiful, ancient and unique art form and as a way to connect people with nature.

I spend hours at the stone yard, hunting for unique colors and textures of stone, looking for the forms of animals or people that lie in them. I shape the rock with a hammer and chisel. Once I’ve roughly shaped a stone, I rub it with another stone to smooth the surface and edges, brighten the colors, open the pores and give the stone a weathered ancient feel.

Some of my paintings are new compositions based on cave and rock art, others attempt to make deteriorating images from actual rock walls look as they might have freshly painted. I use the same painting techniques that paleolithic artists used, the main difference being I use an airbrush to blow light-fast paint onto stone, rather than spitting pigment mixed with cave water out of my mouth (I’d like to live longer than they did!) and my paintings are smaller than the originals for portability. I use the same earth-based light-fast pigments, and scraping techniques and constantly explore ancient art imagery and symbols, trying to recreate communications with the ancient past.

Working on a mammoth painting, I’m using my hand as a mask for the paint.

See new work in my Etsy shop at https://www.etsy.com/shop/BuckArt