Somewhere in the Preselly Hills – I can’t say where, as I didn’t have a map – is a rock painting that nobody will ever see.
I haven’t done many of these, I think this is number 5 over a period of 17 years, and this is the first one I’ve made any effort to document. But each time I’ve done one, the experience has been intense. If Picasso was right, and the mere production of a painting is a magical event that, in itself, has an impact on the world around, then these must be filled with magic.
Each one of these has been accompanied by – or rather, been part of – a sacred rite.
First, the procession to the site.
The site itself is important: High places are better than low. Why? I don’t know, it just feels right that way. Maybe it’s to do with the sense of one’s insignificance in the cosmos. Rocky places are good, too (see blog entry below).
Seclusion is important, as well. Not the big peaks such as Snowdon or Cader Idris, which attract sometimes hundreds of visitors a day. Rather the smaller, or subsidiary peaks, reached along barely-trodden paths, where people only go by accident. Seclusion allows for privacy, and lessens the chances of desecration.
The places mustn’t be too accessible. The process of getting there must be some kind of pilgrimage or ordeal. A long walk, a steep scramble, a scary climb. A process that makes one acutely aware of the surroundings, and the fragility of life.
Time of day is important: These things feel better at twilight – dawn or dusk, though dusk is better as retracing one’s steps in the evening dusk is much easier than finding one’s way in the pre-dawn gloom. It’s a magical principle – things, places and times that are neither quite one thing nor the other. Makes it difficult to get over-bound in extraneous conscious thought processes.
The painting must be hidden. To leave it revealed to all-comers is to put a stamp of ownership on the place, which risks destruction. See blog entries and comments for 7th May and 9th May below. These paintings are sacred, so destruction would be desecration.
Fire is important, as is smoke (cf. Abel’s sacrifice in Genesis). However, too much fire or smoke would attract the unwelcome attentions of national park rangers. Just enough to burn some aromatic herbs, and accomplish any symbolic burning required by the task in hand – usually, for me, the burning of a pictogram or object(s) relevant to my life at the time. Kind of miniature rites of passage.
Sound/music is important too, as is movement/dance. For the first time I carried my Sax on my back to the sacred place. On previous occasions the basic sounds of banging rocks together or stamping on the ground have sufficed, but this time some tonal music felt important.
The first of these was made somewhere in Snowdonia in 1995 – again, I didn’t have a map. I painted on a loose rock which I placed in a natural pit. Visible, but only if somebody looked very closely.
The second was in 2001 in Cumbria. I painted on one small facet of a large boulder near the ground, and then constructed a little archway of small rocks to conceal it. The arch was fairly jumbled and didn’t stand out as humanly constructed.
The third was in 2003, again in Cumbria. This time I didn’t paint, but built a rock “oven” and lit a large fire inside. The rocks were subsequently smoke-stained, but I left them with the stained faces turned in against each other, thus invisible and more likely to endure a while.
For the fourth back to Snowdonia in 2007, a painting on a small rock hidden behind some gorse and heather (yes, it was prickly making it!).
Apart from the smoke-staining, I’ve done all of them with acrylic paints. I don’t know how long they last (though acrylics I’ve put out on the nature reserve behind my home have lasted 12 years and still going strong), or if anyone has ever found one.
In writing this I’m reminded of an artist who made fibreglass “boulders”, indistinguishable from real ones unless you try picking them up, that he left in rocky places in the Arizona Desert. But I can’t remember his name, nor find any reference on Google. I remember he also made prints or paintings of petrol stations on fire.
