Painting Petroglyphs

On the Trail, mixed media by Phillip Hoyle

    “I am painting petroglyphs,” I write.

     My niggling internal editor suggests, “Isn’t that painting pictographs? One chips away to make petroglyphs.”

     “No,” I insist. “I’m painting petroglyphs.” I work wildly, spraying a water mist on paper, splashing paints of various shades of brown onto the wetness, letting the colors run.

                                                                                         

     Occasionally I look up at the petroglyph rubbings that hang on the walls of my studio. I recall standing against the escarpment as I rubbed them, my skin getting burned in the western Colorado sun. The designs seemed so beautiful to me, carved on the sandstone walls and boulders out there under the blue sky, but so ugly when I wanted to hang them on the walls of my apartment. Crayon rubbings on yellowing newsprint. Pathetic looking. I had to do something artistic with these crude rubbings so I could continue to enjoy their beauty and celebrate the feelings they stimulated within me. Collage was my answer. I bought mat boards and started cutting, arranging, gluing. I replicated depth, depicting the rough texture and cracks in the rocks. I was full of ideas and enjoyed creating design, color, and contrast. I started becoming an artist so I could remember.

     While my paper collage contrasted greatly with the hard medium of the original creators’ work, making them did connect me with those ancient artists. They chipped away at the rocks to create an environment of ideas, mnemonics, and myths. I cut and pasted together a world of imagination that carried me back into childhood visits to my grandparents’ farm and forward into a life grounded in such memories.

     The parade of deer, moose, bears, horses, foot and handprints, lines, arrows, stars, medicine wheels, and unnamable creatures elicited an ancient world in my imagination. They conjured a life of wickiups and teepees, of cooking fires and ceremonial smoke. The wind that blew down the Shavano Valley seemed to carry the sounds of chanting, hoof falls, snorting animals, and playing children.

I found in these rock carvings a way to imagine

a life of the past;

I found in them a topic for research;

I found a subject for reflection,

An experience of beauty.

     Crude. That’s what W. C. McKern called these Ute petroglyphs. From his point of view as an ethnologist doing a study for the Smithsonian Institute in the early 1920’s, they were crude chippings of an inferior culture. His evaluation reflected an assumption of trappers, who contrasted their impression of Ute life with that of the Plains Indian tribes much more influenced by white trade goods and ideas. His judgment also reflected philosophical and scientific biases that, in my opinion, missed what these petroglyphs were in themselves and what they represented to the people who made them. The great problem with these markings lies in the fact that it is impossible to know what they represented. Even Native American scholars admit they don’t know. The passing of centuries created an impassable gap, leaving us ignorant, unable to guess with any kind of certainty at the meanings of these scratches. Their permanence laughs at the changes of the societies that made them and of those that still gaze upon them.

     There they remain on isolated canyon walls, colored only by desert paint in blacks and browns. I imagine them peopled, complemented by the colors of feathers and beadwork, by the odors of cooking meat and smoking tobacco, by the sounds of milling horse herds and the melody of a flute. As I rub them, I hear a truck pass on the road below, a hawk call in the sky above, a grasshopper’s wings crackle in the dry desert atmosphere. As I cut the images for my collages, I hear the furnace in the apartment click on and the rush of wind pushing through the vent. As I paint them on paper, I hear footfalls cross the floor above and the motor circulate water in the hot tub.

     I lift the edge of the paper to make the paint run and wonder what the Ute was thinking as he pecked away at the rock. What was his artistic concern? How long did he look for the harder rock to use as a tool? Perhaps he was trying to remind himself of the spirit of the animal he killed to feed his family, his chipping a prayer of gratitude. Maybe he was simply making marks to distance himself from the activity of the camp like a student doodling during a lecture.

     What am I doing? I am thinking about what colors to select to best leave the impression of sandstone. Certainly I am distancing myself from the others with whom I live, but I think I am doing more. I am creating a reminder of the valley, of its plenitude of deer, elk, plants, beaver, gushing springs, rugged rocks, and endless blue sky. I am recalling the past of my imagination to keep alive the leisure of childhood, its unfettered freedom, its sense of unlimited possibility. I am celebrating my connection with the past, with a human spirit that reaches far beyond my family, society, and culture. I made collages and now I paint to show my children and grandchildren life is more than making a living. It is also, and necessarily, an expression of spirit, of beauty, of art.

     I paint my petroglyphs, or more precisely my petroglyph designs, in a work that seems to me as ancient as it is contemporary.

Denver 2006

Paintings by P. Hoyle On the Trail (above) and The Hunt; photo of me in my studio.

The Hunt

Stories I Tell My Clients: A Massage and Just the Right Word

A middle-age woman I massaged at the spa told me she was an office manager and warned me of stressed muscles in her back and shoulders. I worked hard with her. Near the end of the session, I found her right forearm extremely tense and in serious need for deeper work. I applied a combination of Swedish massage, deep tissue therapy, and an interactive myofascial release technique. At the end of the service, she went out into the hallway and by impulse picked up a glass pitcher full of ice water and poured herself a drink. Then to her amazement she realized that she hadn’t been able to pick up and pour like that for several years. She thought I was some kind of miracle worker. I claimed to be doing only what my teacher taught me and expressed the hope that she’d find someone in her hometown to work regularly with her.



Dan and I drove into the mountains west of Santa Fe, New Mexico one afternoon to camp at Fenton Reservoir. He took along his male red Doberman pincer. We got up before the sun hoping to catch some fish. Dan fastened the dog’s chain to a nearby tree, and we threw our baited hooks into the water. After sunup, some unsupervised kids began running back and forth on a path near the dog. An hour or so later, their mom dragged herself out of her tent and hurried by on her way to the lavatory. When she returned, she approached Dan and asked if the dog was good with kids. Dan replied, “Sometimes.” Her kids quit using the path.

I found Dan’s answer was perfect for so many questions and helpful as an interpretation of massage. Sometimes this approach or that technique brings relaxation to muscles or relief to pain, but there are no guarantees, no imaging procedures, and lots of guesswork. We therapists prefer to describe our guesses as intuition. At least that’s what I tell my clients. If they have had a massage accompanied with one of my stories, I know I’ve shared with them an idea or two that I find true. In my version, massage is a rather simple process. Its effectiveness is enhanced by thorough preparation and intelligent decisions, but ultimately the loving handling of another’s pain is its focus and benefit. I love my work and the storytelling opportunities it affords. If my clients laugh, I tell them the endorphin therapy from it comes free.

Sometimes I feel sure I know what a petroglyph
represents. Not so with this one!
Mixed media on paper. Phillip Hoyle

Stories I Tell My Clients: Habits and Habitats

A muscular client complained of pain running from his right hand to his shoulder and neck. I asked him if he worked at a computer. He said, “Yes,” but explained that the pain didn’t occur when he was typing. I asked him if he spent time on line. “Yes,” he again responded.

I told him I had noticed that when I was waiting on a slow-responding program, I tended to get lots of tension in my right hand. I keep it poised over the mouse as if my diligence will save me time. He thought about his habits and realized he slouched and held his body on his elbows when he was on line. And he kept his hand over the mouse ready to hit the button. I suggested he let his hand drop to his side and let his shoulder relax while waiting for a download. I further suggested he get a massage from time to time. I share this story with many people and often have to remind myself.




While giving chair massages at an investment firm for two weeks following the tax season, I watched a room full of customer service workers doing their daily business. They had great work stations with plenty of room, ergonomically correct chairs, the best telephone headsets, computers with large screens, and if they worked one year, any keyboard they desired. But their comfortable atmosphere eventually failed them. I noticed that by three thirty each day they started slouching, crossing their legs, reaching too far for their keyboards. They were too tired, putting in too much overtime, and stressing as they listened to people complain about how their investments weren’t yielding enough (as if this representative of a mutual fund could do anything about that problem). Although the company’s practice of providing massage was a nice gesture, a reward for the workers’ persistence, I thought once a year seemed insufficient. I handed out my cards.

Stories I Tell Clients: Luxury Item and Left or Right?

I received my second professional massage at the historic spa in Jemez Springs, New Mexico. The therapist asked me if I wanted her to concentrate on any particular place. “My forearms,” I requested. I had tightened them up by obsessively playing computer games—the ones that go faster at each level. She worked deeply; I almost jumped off her table several times the pain was so intense. We made it through the massage, and due to her skill, I had three and a half months pain free, a respite for me to figure out how not to hurt myself again. That’s when I realized massage can be much more than a luxury item.


“Are you left handed or right?” I often ask a client at the outset of a massage. I asked that of a young lawyer with whom I had already been laughing. He didn’t reply. I joshed him, “That’s not a difficult question.”

He finally answered, “I was trying to figure out why you were asking.”

I reminded myself that he was a lawyer.

I tell that story to other lawyers or to people who ask why I ask. It’s because I want to know where to begin my work—I tend to begin on the side opposite the dominant—and how to assess the differences in muscle tone and size by whether or not they are on the dominant side of the body.

For the Utes Coyote was a trickster.
Mixed media on paper. Phillip Hoyle