The Science
This piece was inspired by scientific investigation of a piece of cave art, believed to be over 64,000 years old*. After complex processing of a section of the cave wall which was encrusted with deposits of crystalline carbonate, research images revealed the shape of stencilled hand prints. These paintings predated the arrival of modern humans in Europe by at least 20,000 years, indicating that they were made by Neanderthals. This discovery meant that the origins of reflective art were pushed back - not just further in time - but further away in evolution.
‘Ghost print' is a digital montage of original elements Smart photographed. The artists’ hand reaches into a 'globe' of sky, shot with a fisheye lens. It gestures towards another distant hand image that was made using a technique similar to ancient hand-stencil painting. The sky 'globe' also repeats up and back in a kind of ‘visual echo’ towards (or from) the stencil, as if reaching to touch or make contact with the cave artist. Smart uses slate and water-eroded rock in this work which is indicative of the passage of a long period of time.
*Hoffman et al., 2018: U-Th dating of carbonate crusts reveals Neandertal origin of Iberian cave art, SCIENCE, 359(6378), pp. 912-915, doi: https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aap7778
The Artist
Steve Smart is a poet and artist living in Angus (not far from Dundee), Scotland. His poems have featured in print and online publications such as, Atrium, Firth, The Poetry Shed, The Writer’s Café, The Curlew, Ink, Sweat and Tears, Poet’s Corner, and Poetry Scotland. The themes for Smart’s work are varied and eccentric, including ecology, memory and technology - both working and dysfunctional.
You can reach Steve on his various websites: http://www.artsci.co.uk/sds/, https://stevedsmart.wordpress.com/ (poetry), http://www.artsci.co.uk/sds/images/ (imaging) or on Twitter @steveDsmart.
Copyright statement. This work is published under the CC BY-NC-SA license