Stone Writer (Giclée)

Stone Writer by Michael Ome Untiedt

30" x 40"

35" x 45" (framed)

Framed Giclée on canvas

Edition /50

From the Artist

I can't escape thinking about this place, a remote canyon in southern Colorado, and a woman settler from the early days of the West.

For fifty years, Magdalena Cordova, carved her name in the stone of these cliffs. I must assume she did so while retrieving water for the Cordova home; a brief respite in what was otherwise, I am sure, a very hard life. I have found seven of her cliff inscriptions, some of them large and ornate and requiring a lot of work to complete.

This painting is about Magdalena Cordova. Even in her isolated primitive life, Magdalena found a way to stir the pot, break the clock, …with simple musings in stone. I sit on sun-warmed stone in the solitude of the Red Rock Country and think about Magdalena, her dreams and desires, her fears and tribulations. I think about how Magdalena “made her mark”, rose from the vast number of faces of humanity and left inscriptions to ponder over, now a century since her life-time. Her “Marks” are simple, elegant, and long lasting and because of them her memory will run long through the river of time we call history. Would it be that we all did the same, a simple, elegant, long lasting act of ”I am here”. I have several paintings in museums. I don't relate this to brag, rather to rejoice that at least some of the work I will have done on this good earth is in a protected cared-for environment, perhaps lasting with a permanence similar to Magdalena's stone writings.

I think this is something important for all of us to think about; where, what, when, and how we each “leave our mark” for posterity. That is what this painting is about, how despite the enormity of the cosmos and the passage of time, we find ways to ‘mark our turf’ with “Here I am and was!" - Michael