Art is a Language Older than Words

Long before symbols were cut into stone or ink put onto parchment paper, human hands entered the hush of caverns and pressed their knowledge onto rock. In the trembling light of animal-fat flames, figures stirred to life — bison in motion, horses mid-stride, canoes gliding across water, hunters, warriors, signs whose meanings are just beyond our recall. In places such as Lascaux Cave and Altamira Cave, the walls became canvases.

Here in Canada, along granite Canadian shield rock and quiet waterways, ancient travelers left ochre signs for those who would follow — markings not of ownership, but of guidance. Safe passage. Memory. Presence. Art was never mere ornament; it was invocation. It was a map and prayer, story and identity braided into stone. It still is.

Even our cousins, Homo neanderthalensis, entered this current. In Cueva de Ardales, red ochre on cave formations whisper of symbolic longing. Before grammar, before scripture or city walls, there was the gesture — the quiet declaration: I am here. Small handprints of Neanderthals, child-sized, reach across the millennia. This matters.

The impulse has never faded. It moves through oil paint and muraled walls, through dance, film, poetry, and digital pictures. Oil paint itself — earth ground to dust, and mixed with linseed oil — is humble mud made luminous. We create not from convenience, but from necessity. Art remains our oldest tongue, a bridge between inner and outer worlds, between one consciousness and another.

Before we spoke in sentences, we spoke in image.

And somewhere beneath our words, we still do.