Back to: A Personal View
This article first appeared in Descent Magazine (Issue 121, Dec/Jan 94/95), and was later reproduced in Underground Photographer (Issue 1, Dec. 96)
To refer to speleological art is not the same as cave painting; rather it is the other way around. Cave man painted inside caves things he saw outside, whereas we paint what we see within. Such 'modern' paintings have been produced for hundreds of years, yet the artists themselves are generally completely unknown and not appreciated for their time-consuming work that took their heart and soul to produce.
Nowadays another form of art is used to illustrate guidebooks and expedition reports: photography. Often not recognised as an art-form, the creation of a good photograph requires incredible imagination. Where is the camera to be placed, and what will the result be like? Lighting has to be positioned to give depth, tone and perspective. Those of us who have been on a photography trip know well the misery and hard work involved in the pursuit of the 'ultimate picture'. The equipment and people needed, the cold, the expense, the even-more-misery when the photograph comes back black!
Like everything, from fashion to technology, art goes round in circles. In order to add more feeling - and this is what art is all about - new technology is introduced in the production of cave photographs, using filters, altered processing and copying techniques. We can end up with an abstract, subtly pulling away from reality. This is a true art and with it caving becomes accessible to those outside speleology, becomes more creative, commercial and, above all, accepted.
Where do all the other media come in? To me, cave art is like a progression from photography, and permits another way of giving emotion to the caving experience. Have you ever sat in an area of cave mud and formed a model with your hands? One chamber in the Hölloch in Switzerland is dedicated to that art form.
There is, in most of us, a little artist screaming to get out when we experience the euphoria of finding a new passage or enter a jewel- bedecked chamber. We marvel at calcite formations, and give them cute names: Helictite Heaven. Easter Grotto, Fairy Holes, 1001 Nights. We may offer an article to speleo publications, crammed with metaphors, that creates a vivid picture in the reader's mind. Some of us reproduce it on celluloid for others to see. The rarer, braver few create a canvas, probably only seen by close friends and family, for fear of being denounced. Well, this is all art, and it should all be seen.
Cavers come from all walks of life, and most of us have other hobbies and jobs outside caving. Yet how much does caving influence your other activities? Biologists examine the life, historians discover origins, geologists study rock. Artists paint, sculpt, draw, sketch, photograph, model. Their journeys through caves can be slow and exploratory, or fast and euphoric, savouring experience, and memorising movement, shape and colour. We all talk of our experiences; many of us wish to show as well.
I have received a lot of interest in my work from other artists in the UK, and a great deal of encouragement from Linda Heslop in Canada. Then, an offer from the Swiss Congress to visit them prompted me to form a new group: the International Society of Speleological Arts. the main objective of the society is to combine art and speleology, and to promote the standing of speleo-artists in the world of cave and rock.
Contact, initially, will be made through caving publications and conferences, with exhibitions and workshops held at intervals in Great Britain. This year [1994 - ed.] there has already been a successful workshop in the Dales, where visits to Weathercote Cave resulted in a superb painting by Robin 'Reg' Gray which was on display at the BCRA conference. A full programme of events is planned for 1995.