Quote

As with all my work, whether it's a leaf on a rock or ice on a rock, I'm trying to get beneath the surface appearance of things. Working the surface of a stone is an attempt to understand the internal energy of the stone.

Andy Goldsworthy

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Andy Goldsworthy
Age: 68
Born: 1956
Born: July 25
Artist
Environmental Artist
Environmentalist
Land Artist
Photographer
Sculptor
County Palatine of Chester
Andi Gōruzuwājī
Andrew Goldsworthy
Whether
Stone
Understand
Attempt
Energy
Appearance
Leafs
Trying
Surface
Leaf
Work
Stones
Internals
Things
Rock
Internal
Rocks
Ice
Working
Beneath

More quotes by Andy Goldsworthy

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When I’m working with materials it’s not just the leaf or the stone, it’s the processes that are behind them that are important. That’s what I’m trying to understand, not a single isolated object but nature as a whole.
Andy Goldsworthy
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Art for me is a form of nourishment. I need the land. I need it.
Andy Goldsworthy
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I think I have been fashioned by the fickle weather of Britain that it is - it's forever changing. There's no kind of constant sun or dry weather or freezing weather, and I'm always having to change and adapt to that.
Andy Goldsworthy
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At its most successful, my 'touch' looks into the heart of nature most days I don't even get close. These things are all part of a transient process that I cannot understand unless my touch is also transient - only in this way can the cycle remain unbroken and the process be complete.
Andy Goldsworthy
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It takes between three and six hours to make each snowball, depending on snow quality. Wet snow is quick to work with but also quick to thaw, which can lead to a tense journey to the cold store.
Andy Goldsworthy
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The hardened mass of liquid stones had much stronger qualities than those which had simply torn. The skin remained a recognisable part of the molten stone.
Andy Goldsworthy
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A stone is ingrained with geological and historical memories.
Andy Goldsworthy
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I can't edit the materials I work with. My remit is to work with nature as a whole. I find nature as a whole disturbing. Nature can be harsh – difficult and brutal, as well as beautiful. You couldn't walk five minutes from here without coming across something that is dead or decaying.
Andy Goldsworthy
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If I had to describe my work in one word, that word would be time.
Andy Goldsworthy
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Complete control can be the death of a work.
Andy Goldsworthy
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I think that I'm always trying to get beyond the surface appearance of things, to go beyond what I can just see.
Andy Goldsworthy
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The things that I make are that which a person will make. They're not meant to mimic nature. They are nothing but the result of a hand of a person.
Andy Goldsworthy
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I go way beyond just the wood and stone but to the process of growth and farming and the tensions between the two.
Andy Goldsworthy
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Winter makes a bridge between one year and another and, in this case, one century and the next.
Andy Goldsworthy
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Some of the snowballs have a kind of animal energy. Not just because of the materials inside them, but in the way that they appear caged, captured.
Andy Goldsworthy
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I am not a performer but occasionally I deliberately work in a public context. Some sculptures need the movement of people around them to work.
Andy Goldsworthy
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The process of growth is obviously critical to my understanding of the land and myself. So the process is far more unpredictable with far more compromises with the day, the weather, the material.
Andy Goldsworthy
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I have six acres in front of my own house, which I very rarely work on. Most of the work occurs on farmers' fields around me. And I like the discipline of working on other people's land.
Andy Goldsworthy
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Snow provokes responses that reach right back to childhood.
Andy Goldsworthy
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The essence of drawing is the line exploring space.
Andy Goldsworthy