The Rocks Begin to Speak

Rock art is everywhere.

The world is rich with ancient images incised in, or painted on stone. The Colorado Plateau in Utah, Arizona, and Colorado is a particular focal point for rock art, but concentrations are also found in California and all the other western states. There are many thousands of rock art panels in the west, with millions of images contained on those panels. Most of the rock art in the western U.S. was made between one and two thousand years ago, but some is much, much older – five thousand or even eight thousand years old. Almost as soon as there were humans on the North American continent, people were making the petroglyphs and pictographs that constitute rock art.

Images in rock art range from the abstract to representational images of animals and humans. Figures range from the bizarre to the mundane, from pure relief chiseled into rock to fantastical colors. Rock art has regional fashions and styles that transitioned and evolved over time, much like modern art. Obviously the artists were watching each other, learning and adding their own experiences and perceptions. Some rock art is simplistic, while other panels are as sophisticated and visionary as any modern artistic expressions.

The meaning of rock art is lost to the ages, although not due to lack of research, consultation with present-day Native Americans, and pondering. Why humans in this panel, and only sheep in another? What do the ubiquitous spirals and long wavy lines mean? Why this location in a canyon or on a boulder, and not the next bend or promontory that seems just as appropriate? Its meaning is shrouded in mystery, but much of it likely stems from ritualistic practices. Many rock art sites demonstrably mark astronomical events like solstices and equinoxes, or depict supernovas. Some of it surely stems from pure artistic expression.

This collection of images is not intended to be documentary in nature, nor is it meant to be comprehensive or academic in representing the varied styles and themes found in rock art. Some of my motivation for creating these images is to place the rock art in the essential context of the landscape around it, but mostly I endeavor to continue the evolution of the original artistic expression through a modern medium, and to extend the artistic conversation with the tools I have at hand. Photography is a touchless way of helping the original art endure, unfold, and emerge.

Most of these images were captured far from roads or settlements, so my final motivation is to bring the remote to you so that you can appreciate the vision, skill, and mystery created so long ago. These are living figures, speaking in powerful ways, echoing off canyon walls and down the centuries since their creation. They give voice to the stone, and I am compelled to listen.

An exhibit of these images was shown at the Viewpoint Photographic Art Center main gallery in January 2024.

Petroglyphs are made by chiseling, scratching, or rubbing rock surfaces, and frequently punch through an outer layer of patina to create a contrast of bright inner rock to darker outer crust.
Pictographs are created by applying colored pigment onto rock surfaces, usually a ground mineral mixed with a binder such as blood or egg white, and applied with fingers or brushes