CNN
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In the early 1970s, South African summer sun searing his back, 14-year-old Stephen Townley Bassett dutifully followed his uncle into the shade offered by one of myriad caves dotted among the Cederberg Mountains of the Western Cape. Then he stopped and gawked.
Splashed across the rock face in red and yellow hues was a striking collage of half-animal, half-human shapes. Dumbfounded, the teenager’s head swam with thoughts: Whose work was it? When, and why, did they create it?
Yet one question in particular demanded his attention: How was it done? Ever since exiting that cave, Townley Bassett has been “obsessed” with finding answers.
The Cape Town-born artist has spent decades visiting many of the thousands of ancient rock art sites that dot South Africa, in order to meticulously produce millimeter-accurate copies of humanity’s early forays into painting.
Reproductions are nothing new, but Bassett’s works are no ordinary replicas. You won’t find commercial paint or paint brushes in his work – only the materials and tools that would have been available to the indigenous hunter-gatherer San people when they created their designs as far back as 10,000 years ago.
“I’m a scribe, I document someone else’s art,” Bassett told CNN. “We don’t know the name of that particular artist so, in that sense, I’m a forensic artist.
“It’s understanding what was in the hearts and minds of the people who created the paintings … I don’t just want to create copies or curio art. From the beginning I wanted my work to be so exacting that researchers and academics could use it as reference material.”
The stories behind the art
The San are indigenous people in sub-Saharan Africa, with many hunter-gatherer groups existing to this day in Namibia, Botswana, South Africa and other countries in the region.
Remnants of their paintings and engravings are still visible at thousands of locations across the continent, with as many as 7,000 across the Cederberg Mountains alone, according to local rock art curator Londi Ndzima.
Their artworks – depicting animals, humans, and sometimes hybrids of the two – were once generally thought to show scenes from daily life, but academic thought has shifted to see southern African rock art as more often reflecting spiritually and culturally significant images and motifs, according to the British Museum.
Some images have been understood to reflect visions seen by shamans when they entered trance-like states to perform communal tasks like healing the sick.
“When they painted, they were not just doing that for decoration – there was always a story behind it,” Ndzima told CNN.
“When they went (into a trance), the only way they could explain to the others what they saw was to paint these beautiful or funny figures.”
Bassett’s quest to show how rock art was created, began in earnest in 1998 when he gave up his full-time corporate job to pursue his passion.
It’s a process that begins at any one of the rock art sites from Botswana to Zimbabwe. There, he spends days photographing, sketching and measuring the paintings daubed on various cave walls, rocky overhangs and large boulders.
When it comes to recreating the paintings, Bassett rejects modern implements in favor of materials solely found in the field, but modern technology is fair game in the preparation. When up-close examining rock art of a lion leaping amongst a herd of domesticated cattle, for example, Bassett dons dental loupes – magnification devices used in surgical work – to capture every dot and stroke.
Then it’s back to his studio in the Eastern Cape town of Komani, where he turns to the various pigments, binding agents and tools he has engineered to document the ancient works.
Rock art is dominated by four basic colors, he explained; red and yellow, often formed of a natural clay earth pigment known as ochre, black, created using charcoal, and white, sometimes applied by soft clay, like kaolin.
Recreating the materials has been a decades-long process of trial and error. Bassett has found egg, blood, and animal marrow fat to make good binding agents, while raptor (bird of prey) feces and fire-heated ostrich eggshells have proven invaluable in making white pigment, the hardest to come by of the four basic colors.
Even heating the same piece of ochre can yield different colors, while creams and pinkish tones can be achieved through yellow-white and red-white mixes respectively.
Similar levels of resourcefulness have been employed to create painting tools. One brush is created from the shaft of a reed, with propolis – a sticky substance used by bees to seal their hives – used to glue the hairs of a ground squirrel as its tip. Another brush was made using a porcupine quill shaft topped with a dove’s feather.
Tilting the brush’s tip sideways allows Townley Bassett to recreate broad strokes, the type used for the body of a lion, for example, while angling it on its edge brings a much finer line for whiskers and other delicate strokes.
“To get that quality of line … I lick my brushes a lot. It hasn’t killed me yet,” Bassett joked.
Complicating the exercise is that rock art paintings were often painted over by the San people at later dates, imbuing them with new meanings and materials. Furthermore, some colors – particularly red and yellow – have lasted better than others.
To simulate how various paints would last over time, Townley Bassett has conducted accelerated weather testing, exposing them to compressed air and water pressure. Image enhancement software has allowed him to discern faint impressions on the rock face that are barely visible to the naked eye, and then enhance and include them in his own work.
“In some ways, I would say my documentary painting has more information in it than if you went to the site, because you could barely see what’s on the rock,” he said.
The trouble with graffiti
Having authored three books on rock art and worked with both South African and French scientists on the composition of paints, Bassett hopes his documentations will serve as a “research tool” for generations of historians and anthropologists to come.
Regardless, the personal enjoyment of the subject material is plenty gratifying, a “driving force” that has pulled the artist back time and time again from thoughts of returning to the corporate world.
“The pigments, the ingredients in the paint are – in themselves – a site of meaning,” Bassett said.
“I firmly believe that the spirit world and the real world, or the tangible world, were intermingled (for the San) … I can see that their religion, their belief systems, their cosmology was absolutely interwoven into every fabric of their life, and it’s shown in the rock art.”
But there’s another motivation too – one soundtracked by the ominous ticking of the clock.
Natural erosion of rock art, be it by weather or animals rubbing up against the rock face, has been exacerbated by man-made damage. In a cave on a farm in the Eastern Cape’s Stormberg area, Bassett despairs that someone has scrawled their name over a stunning painting of a leaping eland, a type of antelope.
“Graffiti begets more graffiti,” he argued. “A potential vandal is more likely to vandalize a site if they arrive at a site and it has some vandalism at it already.”
While he has developed multiple techniques to remove graffiti without damaging the rock art, such as the use of compressed air or fine abrading agents, inaction is sometimes the best action. Well-intentioned efforts to brush away graffiti can often lead to further damage, spreading charcoal over the rock face.
Greater government commitment and collective awareness of rock art could play a pivotal role in its conservation, Bassett said, citing the work of rock art tourism entrepreneur Thabathani Tshaka in the Eastern Cape as an example of the good work being done.
From the town of Tlokoeng, Tshaka and his wife Phindile run tours at local rock art locations to educate locals and tourists alike about the cultural, often spiritual, importance of the paintings.
“When you are in the rock art site, it’s like you are in the church,” Tshaka told CNN.
“It’s like a place where you pray, a sacred area … those paintings have got a huge and a rich meaning towards our lives because they are our ancestors.”
Former South African President Nelson Mandela once described rock art as “the common heritage of all humanity.” For Tshaka and Townley Bassett, it is a worthy testament.
“I wish there were more people like Thabatani in the country,” Townley Bassett said.
“It’s got to be a collective effort on the part of the citizens to preserve something that really is very old and that we can learn a lot from … When you educate people as to the value of something, they tend to understand the need to preserve it.”