Whilst walking around the Tremenheere sculpture park, my son collected an armful of fallen leaves. As we waited for the family to re-group he began to lay them out in a pattern on the stump of a tree. My sister asked if I’d ever shown him the work of Andy Goldsworthy. I’d not heard of Andy, but his work is incredible.
“Goldsworthy is rarely attracted to the idea of permanence — contradicting most artist’s concerns with permanence and endurance. But there is always a record with Goldworthy’s photographs being an essential part of the installation.
“Each work grows, stays, decays — integral parts of a cycle which the photograph shows at its height, marking the moment when the work is most alive. There is an intensity about a work at its peak that I hope is expressed in the image. Process and decay are implicit,” says Goldsworthy.”
– : Art of Nature.
As my son faced the prospect of abandoning his leaf pattern to the whims of the weather, he looked up in tears and asked, “Can you take a photograph of it?”. Learning to accept impermanence can be hard.
Source: Andy Goldsworthy