Petroglyph 1935 - 1942

Lala Eve Rivol made this image 'Petroglyph' with colored pencil on paper. What a patient artist she was! Imagine her repeating the same marks over and over, building up these images. It feels like looking at a page from a sketchbook, with different ideas and doodles. She's got all these different figures floating on a gray background: some lizards, insects, and then this strange, almost human-like figure, with long limbs and a kind of sun-like circle for a head. I wonder if Rivol was inspired by cave paintings or ancient art. She’s created her own language of symbols and figures. It's like she was creating a world, one drawing at a time. There’s an otherworldly quality to this composition, and it reminds me of the drawings of Forrest Bess or Hilma af Klint, artists who explored esoteric ideas in their work. And it makes me think about how artists are always looking at each other's work, building on what came before, and coming up with something completely new.