I am going rather slowly through Jean Auel’s last book, The Land of Painted Caves.[1] I am savoring every page. There is much there for the heart. I am a bit disappointed with her rendering of cave art, though. In particular, I find next to nothing about geometric art that is of greatest interest to me. I was thus delighted a moment ago when I came across the first mention of it. She describes a sign composed of five vertical lines and two horizontal ones, one of which crosses all five of the vertical lines, while the second goes only halfway across.[2] I immediately drew my rendering of it into my notebook, where I usually sketch my future paintings. It is most likely to end up on one side of one of my remaining three boards in the Cave Art Now series. But I will not rush with it. Perhaps Auel will regale me with a few more signs in the remaining pages. However, she does not go into the nature of geometric art at all. How did it come about? What is its purpose? Why is it interspersed with renderings of animals? So far, she skips the subject entirely. It seems that our several communications over the years have left no impact on her. Alas!

Footnotes

1. New York: Bantam Books, 2011.

2. Op. cit., p. 279.