The Artist's Road Painting the World's Beautiful Places

The Endless Story

Perspectives from The Artist's Road

Aurochs, Horse and Deer Cave Painting     Lascaux, France

    Painters are storytellers. The earliest paintings humans have discovered reveal this. Twenty-thousand years ago (give or take), there was a very successful hunt. Those folks, in that time, hunted big game on foot with spears. The engagement could have easily meant death for some of the people involved, or they might come away without a kill, or both. So the stakes were very high.

   We will never know for sure why historic cave paintings depicting the hunt were created, but one interpretation is this: so good was this event, that the tribe decided to memorialize it with a series of large-scale wall paintings. Using stick figures for the hunters, but anatomically accurate renderings of the animals, one, or several of the tribe together, created what we now know as the fabulous Lascaux cave paintings. We don’t know whether the goal was to simply recall the glory of this important event or to serve as a way to instruct the younger members in hunting skills and strategies. All we know is that it was important enough for those Paleolithic people to devote precious resources to a painting/storytelling project which had to have taken quite awhile to complete.

   Imagine how impressive these paintings must have been to someone who had never seen anything remotely like it. They would have been led down, down, deep into the ground to a strange, dark place. Crawling along, unsure of their footing, they suddenly came face to face with dangerous life-size animals lit only by flickering animal fat candles. The creatures would seem to be moving in the wavering light. It would be scary, and no doubt, a powerful and memorable experience. Thus, the first painters of stories were created, and the first painted community artworks.

   Scroll down the history of art and we see this same pattern, in different forms, repeated. In the Middle Ages, itinerant painters were often employed to help decorate churches with religious figures and events from the Bible. More storytelling. Schools of art created throughout Europe, (École des Beaux Arts in Paris, The Royal Academy in London, and the various German art academies in Düsseldorf, Berlin and Munich, for example) all instructed generations of painters in a particular storytelling style and the techniques needed to paint those stories, most often of biblical and historical scenes.

   Storytelling evolved through the centuries and various schools of art, with the Romantic being the first movement stressing the value of the experiences of the individual artist’s emotions in the art. This set the stage for the storytelling of Impressionism, Cubism, Expressionism and many other isms in art.

   Today, we painters are still storytellers. It may be hard to read sometimes, but there is always a story to any painting. Painting, done well, is a laborious, time-consuming occupation which requires great inspiration, motivation and dedication. In our experience, we have found that people want to know why a painting exists and more about its story. It enriches their enjoyment. We painters should always remember to share our stories, not just our work.