Williams Lake potter and pottery instructor Lesley Lloyd is the featured artist at the Quesnel Art Gallery this month with her show Out of the Cave: Art.
The pieces in her show were inspired by her travels and the opportunity to view ancient cave art found in European caves and designed to show how human beings historically used art as a means of expression.
The show runs Oct. 10 to 31 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Quesnel Art Gallery at 500 North Star Road in Quesnel.
Since the beginning of time, when man first stood upright and walked upon the earth, human beings have recorded things in their lives that are important to them in some way, Lloyd says in her artists statement.
The Chauvet Cave in France, discovered in 1994 is one of the most spectacular and also one of the oldest examples of man’s attempt to express aspects of their lives in a permanent manner.
“I have been enthralled with Cave art since I first saw stickmen scratched onto a cliff face,” Lloyd says. “And when one considers how human beings have expanded their art and the forms they use to express themselves since those first primitives, it is quite amazing.”
One animal that was on the walls of those caves is the horse. And from those “original” works of art, human beings have taken that animal form and stylized it in so many different ways. Where would man be without the horse?
Extensive travelling has allowed her to soak up the historical aspects of pottery from museums, galleries and artisans around the world. But visiting present day potters as she did recently on Crete, Lloyd says she has come to understand more the influence of ageless forms and decoration while enjoying more modern expressions in the ceramic medium.
