COLD HILL CAVES
-Rage! Freezing wind rips off my scarf & blows in front of my eyes / Numbs my hand Despite the frigid weather, I enjoyed three glorious weeks in Kapadokya, taking care of a friend’s house and drawing my ass off. These caves were across from her house.
MISCHIEF
She watched me draw for 2 hours in the cold- March 11 2006 Goreme This lady darted out of a cave house, watched me draw the preceding picture, asked to be drawn and held still as a rock while I drew her.
IN THE HEART CHURCH
-Goreme- Kapadokya / “Naive Byzantine” on white plaster over cave rock, of hearts & flowers / This cave is so dark I can hardly see to work / No wonder they painted it white
05 THE SILENCE SINGS
-Heart Church / Goreme, Kapadokya – Deep inside the rock / A sweet stone chamber / Cut crosses & empty graves / The silence sings.
THE BLACK CHURCH
-Forgotten cave church in Ortahisar on a cold day in early spring This one’s across from a friend’s cave palace in Ortahisar. The missing wall reveals where a fire blackened the inside. The entire mountainside was a Medieval monastery.
INSIDE THE BLACK CHURCH
-Inside the Black Church / Pigeon Valley, Ortahisar / 2 very cold days in March 2006 / Sitting high up on the dirt filling this Medieval church to the domes / I think of the artisans carving these domes ad all those they have sheltered. After Hagia Sophia, all Byzantine churches had domes, even the ones carved in caves.
TWO HATS IN GOREME
-Goreme, 4 March 2006 I lucked out with the old gent crossing the square just before I drew the arch behind him.
ANOTHER FREEZING JESUS
-Pigeonholes & broken pillars at Yusef Koç (St Joseph) 18 March 2006 / Another freezing Jesus high up in Goreme Valley A pal in Goreme introduced me to this fabulous cluster of Medieval cave churches, which his family had taken care of for generations. The pigeonholes were put there by farmers when it was used as a coop. I had to climb up a ladder to get in.
GOREME VALLEY LONGSHOT
-Deep profound silence as the sun goes down.
THE BIG CHURCH
-My reward for sticking on this freezing hillock in the icy wind is the miraculous lemon light that just struck every rock with the same holy chord.
THE PULPIT
Inside the Big Church -Two blissful hours in silence – massive carved monuments to faith hewn out of the living rock
THE GUEST ROOM
-A room with a view / Across the valley: the church. I imagine this to be the luxurious Middle Ages cave digs where they put the visiting prelate. Or not.
THE REFECTORY
-Drawn through a chain-link fence: Refectory? Dormitory? The whole cavern open, carved. The wall behind the trash can is of course modern.
PAINTING IN THE DARK
-I think of the conditions under which these were painted & marvel that we can see them at all. Hand-ground paint, fluctuating temperatures, natural & candle light / Graffiti & archangels in Naive Byzantine painting across the centuries in Yusef Koç / A broken-off pillar, its break rounded with age, hangs like a stalactite in front of a mounted archangel / Long ago they painted this in the dark / Now I paint in the dark / We are all painting in the dark
THE LAST CHURCH
-This very land is holy / The early Christians recognized this & built their churches within the rocks / they lived with the land, not off of it – Came upon this sentinel church at dusk on my last day…very cold…above the church is a cave room- I think of a pastor living tending and dying here. “Oh, that’s Father Theodosius’s church…He never comes down” 22 March ’06
INSIDE THE LAST CHURCH
-The last church, Goreme. It was very dark in here and the scene outside didn’t register in a photo, so I had to stick it out and do the best I could in the cold dark. Think of the pastor!!!