Ken McCormick is a visual artist and deep ecology advocate who traces his ancestry back to the cave painters of France and Spain— the richest source of Palaeolithic art in the world.

Ken paints modern art from a neo-archaic perspective, reworking the themes of indigenous and pre-agricultural small-scale societies for a contemporary audience in contemporary times. As his ancestors ventured into these caves, painting their visions onto the walls— so too he speaks with respect for the spirit of our wild lands and the rewilding of human values.

40 years ago, Ken took on the role as the public voice of Greenpeace in their original office in Vancouver, and since those pioneer days, has journeyed forward onto the path of creating context-rich imagery that helps increase the physical and spiritual links of humanity to this amazing planet we inhabit.

Ken is a passionate narrator of the deep ecology, biocentrism, wilderness protection, and agroecology, with credits that include:

Greenpeace.  Wrote and illustrated fundraising programs including: protecting St. Lawrence beluga whale populations, The Greenpeace Struggle To Save The Great Whales, Antarctica biodiversity protection, The Planet Earth Monthly Cheque-Up fundraising program, the world’s first annual report printed on 100% post-consumer recycled paper, and an award-winning 30-second animated public-service TV announcement calling for the protection of Antarctica as a world park.

The Salmon Recipes. Designed an ethnographic cookbook documenting the culinary practices of First Nations people along the Canadian North Pacific Coast, using stories of how their historic fishing culture would be destroyed by a proposed tar-sands pipeline and supertanker port proposed in their traditional salmon fishing territories.

Heritage™. Designed the brand, messaging and packaging of the original, early-agricultural heritage grains product line of Nature’s Path Foods ready-to-eat organic cereals, breakfast bars, granolas, breads, waffles and muesli. Heritage™ introduced pro-active biodiversity protection to North American supermarket shelves.

EnviroKidz™. Designed the brand, messaging and packaging for the world’s first organic ready-to-eat cereals, frozen waffles, and hot cereals product lines for children, promoting our interconnected relationship with endangered animals.

Manna™ Breads. Designed the packaging and marketing material for a line of organic sprouted bread products based on baking methods first developed in pre-agricultural societies.

Wild Salmon Protection. Wrote the Canadian Prime Minister’s Office Salmonid Enhancement Program’s TV, radio and newspaper campaign advocating more government funding for wild salmon preservation.

Artist’s Statement

Red Iron Caves is a an expression of Post-Industrial Animism, reclaiming the regenerative imagery of indigenous hill tribe cultures who live in close connection with their land.

My travel and residency among hill-tribe society in Southeast Asia, Canada, Northern Europe and Micronesia opened me to opportunities for rewilding my relationship to the land. I see industrial civilization rapidly eating away at the battered and bruised web of life that weaves together the complex balance of the natural world,

With the Red Iron Caves project, I upcycle visual references from a broad sweep of cave wall art, rock art and portable art from the High Palaeolithic era between 40,000 to 12,000 BCE, to the Early Neolithic era from 12,000 to 2,000 BCE. My primary references are from my own Basque heritage in the homeland of early European culture. This is a land holding strong ancestral roots to its original modern human inhabitants, a First People who crawled into the depths of the caves in northern Spain and southern France, leaving behind amazing galleries of charcoal and red oxide pigment drawings preserved under-ground for over 30,000 years. They document humanity’s early coevolutionary relationship with abundant grazing herds of large herbivores, including bison, horses, muskox and mammoths.

My own art has been strongly influenced by the masks, costumes and religious artifacts representing animistic spirits from African, Papuan, Tai and Lao hilltribe, Balinnese, North Sumatran, Inuit, Sami and Siberian cultures. What amazing visions humanity has created! I encourage you to hang talismanic prints on your own cave walls— to invite prosperity, fertility and abundance into all our lives.

Blessings to The Great Mother of us All.

 Retreat. Rebirth. Rewild.