A long time ago, (29 years ago, to be exact), I was studying my art and design A-Level and wishing that I wasn’t. My teacher had a very obvious leaning to 2D work and we studied cubism, pop art and abstract expressionism. I was interested in 3D work, craft and textiles and felt increasingly detached from my course and disillusioned with arts education.
I would look longingly at the pottery wheels and batik supplies that sat unused in one room of the art block. Even some printmaking would have offered a life-line, but the lino tools had rusted from neglect and the only lino available was so hard that a hammer and chisel would have left no impression!
So it came as a great surprise one day, when we watched Two Autumns, in class. It is a film about Andy Goldsworthy working in Japan and Dumfriesshire. I had never heard of him before, nor thought of the possibility of creating art with found, natural materials, but suddenly and unexpectedly I found myself actually enjoying my art lesson.
I think it was actually the only highlight of the entire two year course, because unfortunately my teachers inability to connect with me and my interests, led to me failing to connect with the course and shutting off my mind to everything that she had to say.
But I am grateful to her for putting on Two Autumns that day, because it has stayed with me, a vivid memory, that changed the way that I viewed the natural world around me. I can honestly say that Andy Goldsworthy and his work, started my interest in the little details I would see around me, and opened my eyes to the beautiful array of colour and textures in nature.
To this day, I can’t help stopping just to watch the light shining through leafy canopies above me. In fact, I have hundreds of photos of light through leaves!
So perhaps you can imagine, how excited I was when I found out about the Andy Goldsworthy – 50 years exhibition at the National Galleries of Scotland, in Edinburgh!
I had originally intended to go with Matt, (he wanted to take me, because he said it was so rare for me to express such a strong desire to do something for myself), but we made the mistake of putting it off, because August was a busy month and then of course he fell ill with pneumonia.
He is still a long way from being well enough to make a trip like that, so I took four of our kids along instead, having learned my lesson about letting the opportunity pass.
The images above are of Fence – a screen made from barbed wire; and Sheep Painting – where he placed a mineral stone in the centre of a canvas (placed in a field of sheep) and let them paint mud onto the surface with their feet. Having lived surrounded by farmland, for five years in Orkney, barbed wire and muddy animal prints are very everyday things to me, but here they were – transformed – into something quite different.
And I suppose that is the real magic in Andy’s work, for me. He makes me see things differently and opens my eyes to beauty that I might have missed otherwise.
It’s been really hard to chose which images to share with you in this post, because I loved so much of the exhibition and took so many photos! But there was no doubt in my mind about including Red River Rock (shown above). This film of a blackened river rock being sanded clean and then the colour from it washing into the river water, was one of my absolute favourites.
If you read my posts regularly, you are probably already aware of my love of water, whether it is the sea or rivers and streams, and I felt a real connection to this film. Wren and Lark, my 7 and 15 year olds, felt the same, as we enjoy very similar things about our time spent in nature and Wren has made me promise, that we will try this out for ourselves.
I wanted to show you Skylight, which was made from Reed Mace, gathered from the Loch of Kinnordy, in Angus.
The stems made a curtain around the gallery’s skylight, allowing natural light to illuminate the work and casting the room beyond into shadow.
Again, the materials were so familiar to me and yet were completely transformed!
Another one that had a particular connection for me, was Flags.
Originally made for display outside the Rockefeller Centre in New York, each one was dyed with earth from one of the 50 US states.
Having worked with natural dyes during my time in the Orkney Islands, enjoying the sense of place that they bring, I was delighted to see this work at the exhibition.
The Oak Passage was fantastic. Made from windfallen branches, it sits upon the oak floor of the gallery. Andy says,
“The floor is as much a part of the Oak Passage as the branches. I want to see the forest in a house and the house in a forest”.
He also talks about the pathway and says,
“The passage of people, whether it be through a building or the land, lies at the heart of my practice.”
My girls loved this one and the fern wall, beyond the path.
Finally, a small selection of the images of past works, that were on display. We loved all of these and they have given us so many ideas for our own homeschool art lessons, that it will keep us very busy this autumn!
If you get the chance to visit the exhibition before it ends in November, do take it. You won’t be disappointed. But if you can’t get to Edinburgh there is a wonderful book to accompany the exhibition, called Andy Goldsworthy – 50 Years.
I bought a copy home for Matt, but I am very much looking forward to reading it myself, cover to cover. There is an interview running all the way through and lots of extra images of his process and sketches.
