I tivoed a documentary about Andy Goldsworthy (Rivers and Tides). I remember studying him back in my art history days, and not being particularly struck (other than by how much patience he must have) but now I find the work extremely compelling. As artmaking, his work is just so … pure? I don’t know the right word, but I think I could watch this repeatedly; it is compelling, earthy yet serene, and brings me back to thinking about essentials of artmaking and even essentials of life — he works with the big concepts, life, light, time, but without being at all presumptuous or overbearing. I want to say it’s very Zen, but somehow that’s too pat, not full enough.
I need to keep paying attention to this kind of work; it is so easy as I am starting out and still looking for a definitive style and some sort of success to get smaller and smaller in the focus of the work and lose the perspective of why I gave into art in the first place.
