15,500 B.C. Redux: The Great Black Cow Painting

"The Great Black Cow" is one work of my cave art series that resurrects primeval art. To express my love of animals, nature, and ancient cultures, my pieces re-interpret the primal power and beauty of scenes from prehistoric caves in France and Spain. Most of the works in the series were fashioned while in my own "cave" during the COVID lockdowns and an 11-month-long isolating illness. This particular piece re-creates one section of the Lascaux cave (15,500 B.C.) in southern France. The original 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 fashion reverential masterworks of the lives, movements, and spiritual energy of the animals of their world. In my interpretation of "The Great Black Cow," I used modern painting methods, though the prehistoric technologies were quite inventive. My stucco base affects the uneven surface and cauliflower texture of limestone caves. The shaman artist painted the cow with horsehair brushes made with pulverized manganese rock and bone marrow; I, of course, used brushes and tube paint. Flint and bone tools incised white lines from the original limestone; in my piece, white stucco texture pops out from under my oil paint. The shaman blew paint from inside hollowed bones to create sprinklings; here, my 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. Framing is not recommended as it would hide the spillover of stucco over the edges as part of the creative process. Comes with hanging hardware.