Rupestre

Cave monoprints

Graces in the Cave

The way out

Venus in the cave

Translated from French means ‘Rock’. After re-visiting Peche-Merle and Font de Gaume caves and feeling their weight and emotion, coupled with viewing the wonderful ‘1001 women’ exhibition in the Museum of pre history at Les Eyzies de Tayac, I wanted to explore some more. These monoprints are the result of those explorations, and for me help to give a sense of place for the person/people that painted those caves. The parietal paintings and drawings of the Upper Palaeolithic mesmerize and enthral me ; their context and our subsequent need to know why they exist, how they have impacted the human trajectory and what relevance they have for us today. They were done for a purpose, which will forever be invisible to us, but having visited the painted caves on numerous occasions, for me their greatest impact is upon my heart, my sense of wonder and my spatial awareness. When the lights go out in those deep dark depths the sense of the interior, both personal and cosmic, is almost overwhelming and my place in the universe seems even more uncertain. Perhaps our yearning to belong was given voice in the cave when our ancestors first articulated our foothold on the earth by drawing and mastering the walls therein.

I salute those ancestors who journeyed into the blackness, (for whatever reason), for their curiosity, their bravery and their tenacity, for without them I would not exist.