Nothing Gold Can Stay - A Work in Progress

Fragment, gold ink on Gunnera leaf

 

Nothing Gold Can Stay

 

Nature's first green is gold,

Her hardest hue to hold.

Her early leaf's a flower;

But only so an hour.

Then leaf subsides to leaf.

So, Eden sank down to grief,

So, dawn goes down today.

Nothing gold can stay.

 

Robert Frost

 

There comes a time when you realise your parents will die one day. A horrible realisation first known as a child, perhaps at bedtime, soothed with talk of life being long and mum and dad still being young. As an adult is that realisation any less sharp, more comprehensible with the passing of time?

Stood in the garden late summer, visiting my parents. I noticed dad's gunnera leaves dying back, magnificent giant leaves, beginning to crumble. I turned to see dad and was struck by the connection between the changes in his gunnera's tough skin and the skin of his own arm, bruised and papery now, evidence of illnesses and of his own autumn.

Nothing gold can stay. When we think about mortality and the process of aging there is defiance, resistance, the urge to hold on and to preserve, to keep everyone with us somehow. Rather than focusing on the other, the place I can't even glimpse at, where letting go starts.

This triptych of drawings I am working on (ink and enamel paint drawn directly onto dad's gunnera leaves) are an exploration of these thoughts.

 

Gold ink, to denote the precious, to preserve and repair.

Bright red enamel paint, defiant bolts of life, vibrant still.

White and silver ink envelop what is already lost.

 

Work in progress, detail, gold ink on gunnera leaf.

Work in progress, detail, red enamel paint on gunnera leaf.

Work in progress, detail, white and silver ink on gunnera leaf.

I came across Robert Frost's poem 'Nothing Gold Can Stay' a month or so into working on these drawings and it has stayed with me, as I continue to draw.