January starts with Ice Age art
In 2003, I made a quilt, 13000 B.C., after spending several weeks learning to draw the animals in cave paintings in Dordogne and Altamira from that time. The cave artists worked in the dark, using simple pigments, and drawing quickly. They often drew over older drawings, and calcium deposits have covered some of the work over the past 10000 years. I felt that it was OK to use their style, since so many different artists had already contributed to the cave paintings.
Since that first quilt, I have used the drawings on freeform stoneware plates, and more recently, on highly figured maple burls. Something about the complex surface of the burl invites simple lines. Where the figures have shading, it was done with oil paints, which blend beautifully on wood.
A group of these turnings and plates will be at the Boulder Street Gallery in January 2019.
The bowl with the ice age rhino is birch, about 8″ in diameter.