Most often I work with my own photos, but this image is not mine. I’ve come across it in a Smithsonian magazine and fallen instantly in love with the lines of these drawings, lions and mammoths, created on a cave wall in “30,000 to 28,000 B.C.”
The gesture is so free and also masterful, I think of the human hand, mind, eye—somebody, looking at their world made these beautiful images of animals in motion, over and over again. I’m not sure why they made them, other than the creative impulse.
I imagine the artist had little to no sense of security about the future—how could they?—only the moment of making the work.
And I am writing, for the moment, now.
Thinking of you all, with huge appreciation. I hope you’re staying well and doing good work, doing what makes your heart happy.
Look at this drawing!
Are you finding inspiration?
-Monica
Always inspirational. Those drawings in France are such so amazing. It is theorized that they're an early attempt at animation, as flickering torchlight in the cave makes the images dance in phantasmagoric ways. Werner Herzog did a masterful documentary on these called "Cave of Forgotten Dreams."