Lascaux, France

My favorite image from the age of 3 on has been the Lascaux “Chinese” horse. Something about the spare design with a naturalists eye for detail still calls to me.

The paintings in Lascaux cave were created around 17,000 years ago. The cave was rediscovered in 1940 and looked freshly painted. In just a few decades however, the cave’s environment was so altered that mold covered large areas, and chunks of paint fell off the wall. The cave was closed to the public, a replica was built, and the original paintings were shadows of their former selves.

Even seeing the replica cave is a moving experience, but I resolved to learn how to paint on the closest thing I could to a cave wall, and try to bring prehistoric art back to life as it looked freshly painted.

Chauvet cave, France

Discovered in the mid-1990’s, Chauvet cave was protected from the beginning and will never be accessible to the public. Seeing photos of the paintings from this cave challenged me to recreate complicated, naturalistic observations from 30,000 years ago that I would never see in person.

More to come …