Journey with American Artist John Varriano as he channels the inspiration for his Megaliths series.

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I find a clearing in the buried, distant past that tells me the story of how art shaped the world. It begins in the early dawn of humanity’s advancement. It is the story of the first seekers, and the boon they bring forth. 

There are a series of rugged mountains with caves facing the open sea.  The seashore is a mixture of calm gravelly stretches and rocky cliffs where mighty waves crash violently against the rocks. The climate during this period is turbulent with cloudy skies that rush by with strong winds. Only glimpses of the sun and the blues skies can be seen beyond the clouds. It rains frequently for relatively short bursts but the nights are generally clear.

Within this environment exists a large tribe of advanced but isolated dwellers. Among them is one who peers deeply into the landscape, who watches the shifting sky, the movements of the animals, and the stirrings of the people. This man is an artist. 

Continued

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There are others in the tribe gifted at stone quarrying, rope making, transportation of material, and skills we would classify as the ancient prototypes of engineering and construction. The artist, different from the others in the way he perceives, has been endowed with penetrating insight and much technical skill. He is adept at making tools, understanding materials, and using color. Most of all, he possesses an intuitive grasp of geometric shapes and forms.

He finds expression as a spirit calls him to draw on the walls inside the caves. By torchlight, he paints. Instinctively he uses geometric shapes to convey his thoughts and beautiful colors to breathe life into his work. These drawings are mysteriously old, older than the artist and his people. They are also enigmatically advanced with a complex array of combinations and patterns. The rich colors are other-worldly and provide a radiant substitute for the warm glowing sun that rarely appears in its full glory during this age. The artist knows, but his language cannot communicate the idea that the images stand outside of time.

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The intense and continual outpouring of these ideas command the artist to give his drawings depth, breadth, and height.  His attention turns to the local stone. Exceptional, it has a purity and consistency similar to the marble from the mountains of Carrara. Its deviations are that it is more resilient, more elastic, less prone to fracture, and more pliable and malleable. Nature has provided the ideal material for sculpture.  Through experimentation, the artist learns how to paint the stone with the pigments and techniques he has refined.

He uses the giant stones available to him. Sensing the importance of these images, his fellow tribesmen quarry the stones in varying heights from ten to thirty feet.  He spends long, numerous, work-filled years creating these magnificent Megaliths. They stand for Millennia and serve as sentinels on the dramatic landscape. 

Each day before nightfall, he builds a fire at the foot of a different Megalith. In the dusky, grey, lavender twilight he watches the flames rise before the sculpture. Others from his tribe join him, and the rolling clouds move above and behind the sculptures.  The Megaliths create a bridge between the unseen and the seen and give the transcendent form. As they collectively share in this experience, they are filled with a sense of awe and well-being. 

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