Have you ever taken the initiative to go and visit caves with drawings on the walls, other than the caves where they grew mushrooms during your childhood, on which you made your first graffiti?
Do you like parietal art, maybe you 've never asked yourself? Same for me ... until Lascaux 4.
So we went, my family and I, during the October holidays in 2018, without knowing what to expect. The building Lascaux 4 is ultra modern, and the interior offers a part of the identically rebuilt cave walls, and a high tech space where you can walk around the reproductions suspended in the air, a digital tablet in your hands. That is where ... space and time wrap around themselves and collapse, imagine, you are at once 15,000 years back and tomorrow! I went there without any expectation, I have to say that it is the best posture to adopt to be hit by the shock right in the face. Camille, our guide, was able to captivate me from the start and the way she spoke about the artists of those remote ancient times, yes we are talking about true artists here, left me caught squeezed in sandwich between -15000 and tomorrow slices.
Fascination and wonder at so much strength and simplicity.
I left the place with a small bag including local pigments for future parietal art sessions and returned home... today. I'll tell you how the animals came to me in my next post, ok?
So, I was telling you last time, that I came back from Lascaux 4 enchanted, with a pack of 5 ocher and red natural pigments, without knowing what I was going to create with them. Meanwhile I won a Public Prize, it was at the annual exhibition of Morainvilliers next to where I live, which allowed me to buy the coveted screen of my dreams! Let me explain, it is a three blank framed canvases assembled in a screen, wanted it! Had it !!! Thanks to this Prize! I unpacked it and waited for inspiration, asking that all parts of me (all my dimensions) be reconnected. It was the first time I asked for this before painting (I will talk to you later about some preparation before painting, in a future post perhaps). Then, I decided to do the background with acrylic paint because it dries faster and it unifies the colors, it would leave me time to figure what direction I was going to take, then I would compose with oil paint. My idea: a Japanese-style thing that rhymes with "screen thing". So, I applied the colors and I brushed and brushed again (that is a large surface to cover! 1m50x 1m50). And I decided to stop there.
I think it was only the next day, when seated in front of this vast plain, that I began to hear them ... neighs, grunts ... (it's OK, you're safe! It is only me depicting the situation in an "augmented reality mode", an internal function that I downloaded some time ago), I saw the horse first and just above him the beast with its sharp fangs sticking down its mouth. And here a prehistoric shrew! Oh! An auroch just above, did you see it too? (I'm talking to my daughter)
Up to the mammoth with its long tusks ... they had all landed in my living room (converted into an art studio), and it was me who had invited them without knowing it! Do you also see them on the picture? Next week I will delimit them a little more for you and tell you what happened after that.
Now that I have drawn the outlines of the animals, do you see them more clearly? So, I quickly took out the pigments that came from their their home land !! Hey! Look, smell, this comes from your home! I smeared the horse, the coss-bred porcupine-ferret shrew which did not survive it, the speckled panther and Mr. Mammoth.
Still, I had to overcome a big deal of hesitation before marking them: Couli, since when are you a figurative artist? I know you love animals, but there are painter who specialize in that You will loose your customers who love your artistic line! But hey, did not I ask, and receive?! So here I go, following the procession of animals, hoping they are not taking me on the path to extinction!
And as I saw the formation of the procession of extinct animals walking towards the right (exiting this plane of history), the horse was coming from the other direction, still being here on earth. Human found its place too, in fact its leg was there all this time, but I had not looked up enough to see that it was its place in the procession, just next to the wild beast ... In the center of the canvas, I painted a huge semi-precious stone (which is now buried), with symbols that represent Ascension of the living (spirals), that procession on the timeline now made more sense, all were walking towards Ascension! The "icing" in the cave was when I saw the shaman! See you soon!
Do you remember that I first asked to gather all the parts (simultaneous dimensions) of myself before starting to paint the fresco of Lascaux 5? I spent my day concentrating on the cave wall effects, stalactites, colors, brightness, transparencies and I was half satisfied but "in progress". After painting all day I like to contemplate the extent of the task I accomplished, so I sit on my couch and I let my eyes wander, to see if it is visually fluid among other things. And there ... Shivers.
Did anyone invite this Native American old man on the top right of the painting?He is in profile with a mask raised on his forehead, a large hood covers the back of his head. Everything is there, the pupils of his slightly slanted eyes, the lips well formed, the nose slightly pointed. See how the wall between each dimension of the self can be as thin as a cotton canvas! This enabled me to put a face on this "wise" aspect of myself in which I sometimes tap when I do energetic healing or travel elsewhere, among others.
And a few days later I SAW that the ascending human, whose structure has become crystalline, was himself-herself standing in another larger human, enveloping him, as if he were the dream, the thought form of the greater encompassing soul. I loved the idea right away! Every bit of it speaks to me! And I could not have done any better if I had consciously tried to!
Wait, I hear rustling at the waterfall ... SEEN !! With your long neck and your white feathers, just at the head of the procession ... so, are you going to take us there? Symbolically, who better than the bird, to lead us for the take off! PS: I found out later on that the wild cat was a saber-toothed tiger !! Did you know that? I read it in "The Evolution Man"!
Well, I thought I was done with this "sacred saga"! But yesterday, when attempting to refine the details of the picture, I set it on fire! First, a few dry branches amassed and brought back by my tribe from the surrounding forest, then a gentle little fire and a lot of heavy black smoke - still coughing from it - then a beautiful, very powerful fireplace that lights up so well! Can you smell the scent of burnt wood ?
I know that prehistoric people, back in those times did not make fire inside the cave because the smoke could not escape. But the artists, when they were painting, needed that fire, that light! Jeez! I screwed it! the fire took to the canvas! (ok, it wouldn't take to the rock like that ...) Uh, hey! So here I can't help but wonder, what could the artist mean by doing such an action?! Was it calculated? Is it symbolic or what? This story of Lascaux 5 is both very vibrant and present in me and at the same time, as a reverie, a memory of myself at another time, in another era. To lit the fire to the canvas is a way to detach myself from it, not to identify too much with this one facet of me, just to notice it, to feel it and to relive it perhaps, to bring it to my conscience, nothing more. Do not our dreams contain the remembrancies and memories of who we have been, and is it not just a smoke screen? I choose to be the one who holds this picture in my hands and contemplates it with the joy of knowing this inner richness. And with enough distance to be able to live my present life in the moment. I loved it to immerse myself in this prehistoric world since the start in last October 2018 in bits and pieces, that have each fueled this work that I am disclosing, completed, to you. Just to finish on Lascaux, Many questions remain unanswered regarding the signs, strokes and other symbols used by us (cavemen in another dimension). I am absolutely not an expert, you probably got that by now, but I have a very simple and pragmatic explanation. Depending on where these signs are placed on the wall, I had the ffeling that they were talking about the number of heads seen (of the animal represented) at this or that place (represented by a symbol, only applied and valid for this group in this cave), to list and inventory the flow of game pasing by. That's only my hypothesis. I hope you enjoyed it? You can write me comments, I will be happy to read you.
Here is the final picture of the blobal work
End of the saga, Thank you for reading so far. Couli