Painting Prehistoric California

Learn how Laura Cunningham paints scenes from prehistoric California as a way of discovering a lost history.

Painting Prehistoric California Host: On the campus of Fresno State University, there's another glimpse of prehistoric California. These murals are the work of artist Laura Cunningham who specializes in capturing the lost valley of her imagination with paint brush and pallet. As a rare dessert rain storm blows through the Nevada Ranch. A fragment of California’s past take shape in her minds eye and begins the short journey to Canvass. Laura Cunningham: The Sacramento River had really beautiful large woodlands with cottonwood and willow and so I'm just trying to catch a mood of a rainy day that could have been on the Sacramento River perhaps in the past. I can use this a little chunk of a bigger painting for a reconstruction of what Sacramento Valley might have been like two or 300 years ago. Host: Reconstructing the past is Laura Cunningham’s passion. Her painting reached back into California distant pass. And into the vast gulf of time between the valleys geologic formation and the late ice age when humans first appear. Laura Cunningham: The central valley to me is the heart of California and had some of the most interesting thing in the whole state, from the prehistoric pass. Host: Cunningham has carefully studied the geology, plants and animals of each era. So here paintings are not fanciful visions but snaps shots in time back to my meticulous research. Laura Cunningham: Million years ago too 10,000 years ago you had the central valley looking Africa it must have been the Serengeti and you had American lions, doit of wolves, saver tooth cats, dirk-tooth cats and giant short face bears which must have been the most incredible terrestrial predators on this continent ever. Host: And hovering near by, patiently waiting their turn when the predators were sated giant condors with 11 foot wing spans. But the valley of prehistory but not have been completely foreign or modernized. Laura Cunningham: There would have been golden hills with poppies and coast live oaks and valley oaks and then giant Colombian mammoths. Roaming through its huge tusk that were 10 feet long. Host: It’s more than Nostalgia that drives Laura Cunningham’s visual quest to recapture early California. She believes there are valuable lessons behind the constant change that defines California’s history. Laura Cunningham: I think one fascinated thing about exploring our early California landscapes and painting them and then photographing them and looking at them is we can learn to inhabit our homeland more deeply. Our landscape, our beautiful California we can get to know it better, know it’s passed and feel that we are truly at home and can take care of our land.