Sacred Mountains Project

The Sacred Mountains Project is an evolving art series that captures and communicates the power and spirit of holy mountains around the world.  Certain mountains are held to be sacred by indigenous traditions and world religions, worshipped as spiritually charged portals connecting heaven and earth.  As the sacred zone closest to higher spiritual realms and the home to many of man’s gods, these are sites where people have been drawn to for millennia on a quest to understand a deeper and more meaningful life.

Putua Shan, Zhejiang, China One of the four sacred mountains in Chinese Buddhism

Huangshan, Yellow Mountains, Anhui Provence, China 2018

Mount Aso, Kyushu, Japan Sacred Shinto mountain

Mestia, Ushba & Kasbeki Mountains The Caucusus Mountains, Georgia

Kakila Peak & Ure Peaks, Lil’wat Nation and Squamish Nation Territories

British Columbia, Canada

Galena Peak, former Shoshone-Bannock Tribal Lands

Sawtooth National Forest, Idaho

The Boulders, former Shoshone-Bannock Tribal Lands

Sawtooth National Forest, Idaho

Jungfrau, Bernese Alps

Switzerland

Piz Nair, Bernina Alps

Switzerland

Baldy Mountain, former Shoshone-Bannock Tribal Lands

Ketchum, Idaho

Sacred Mountains are the areas closest to higher spiritual realms and the home to many of man’s gods.  These are sites where people have been drawn to for millennia on a quest to understand a deeper and more meaningful reality.  I have also felt the lure and inspiration of the mountains throughout my life, exploring and retracing the steps of the spiritual seekers, artists, and philosophers who have come before me.  I create mixed media artworks inspired by their spirit, using source photographs that I take at these sacred places.  These artworks have been exhibiting in galleries and museums around the world.   

Since visiting my first holy mountain, Emei Shan in Szechuan, China, I have traveled to and created artworks inspired by many other sacred mountains around the world, including Jiuhua Shan in Anhui Provence, and Putuo Shan in Zhejiang Province, China, the Caucasus Mountains in Georgia, Aso volcano, Japan, the Swiss Alps, the Cuban coastal mountains of Humboldt National Forest, the Peruvian Andes, the Rocky Mountains of British Colombia, and Appalachian Mountains in the U.S.  This process has connected me to past generations of artists and spiritual seekers and helped me understand my place in a lineage that reaches back thousands of years. 

For this series of artworks I use a very unique mixed media process I developed that combines elements of photography, painting, printing and digital processes.  I apply a textured gold foil to the surface of the works, utilizing a process that employs heat and manual manipulation to apply the foils. 

I use gold because it is the symbol of eternity, perfection, and the divine.  Reflective, spiritual, and metaphysical, it exudes a warmth that evolves as the day’s light changes.   My artworks evolve continually, just as the light in nature changes throughout the day.

Bill Claps, July, 2023