:: 2009 :: 50cm x 150cm :: Markers on Cartridge Paper ::
El Castillo is a cave in the Cantabrian region of Spain with art dating to around 25-30,000 years ago. A key site in the debate regarding the transition from Neanderthal to anatomically modern human across Europe, what interests me are the friezes of apparently abstract and geometric forms which bear a powerful resemblance to flickering visual imageries seen during migraines. The bars and undulating dots were on first seeing very familiar to me and not for the first time I felt a kind of portal opening up in the back of my head, as if a connection was being made directly between my brain and ancestors going far back into the dim mists of time. These patterns are located in deep chambers away from the more 'public' art of bisons and handprints in the caves, and I do feel that the geometric images must have been for trance-based work in quiet firelight, a kind of private, esoteric vision quest that perhaps all members of the tribe partook in at some point in their lives. How these dots and lines must have moved in the flickering flames...
