Take a dusty road out of Emery and deep into the wild red desert of Utah and you will see them. There, on sunbleached walls of sandstone, live the rock angels.
Pictographs, they call them. Art by many hands over many years. Who and how and what it all means are questions we all ask, but as artists, we know there is no simple answer.
Or maybe there is. Sometimes art simply needs to be born.
To counter the effects of the brilliant desert sun on my photographs, I selectively edit the paintings by hand to make the details more visible. With my own brush, an electronic stylus designed in a far away future, I trace over the ancient pictographs, one by one, as though the work were my own. I imagine how it must have felt to apply the paint, stroke by stroke, onto the walls, to turn the deep dream imagery into something for all to see.
I think for a moment I can feel what the artist felt. And then it is gone.
Were they painted in the light of day, under a burning sun? Or painted by firelight late in the night in the manner that many artists are wont to do? Were these images made for the tribe, the community, the village? Or was this wall a secret place for misfits to express themselves?
Further down another road and up a steep and rocky trail are the petroglyphic sheep. Preserved for all time, or for as long as the elements will allow them to stay.
There are deer here, too. And so many stories.
I see love in these etchings. Admiration, gratitude, fascination, connection. Perhaps even celebration and commemoration of a life that was taken to sustain many others. A triumph of a successful hunt, or a longing by some youngster for the day when they will be old enough to go out and hunt with their elders.
I see curiosity and whimsy and that sacred element of creativity that rediscovers calm in a perilous life. I see art, the beautiful constant of our existence.
Photos taken at the Rochester Panel and nearby Petroglyph site (that I cannot remember the name of), within the San Rafael Swell Recreation Area in Utah, USA. Additional information about this art can be read in the panels below.
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