Quote

I want to get under the surface. When I work with a leaf, rock, stick, it is not just that material in itself, it is an opening into the processes of life within and around it. When I leave it, these processes continue.

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
Leave
Sticks
Within
Opening
Process
Surface
Around
Material
Work
Rock
Leafs
Life
Continue
Leaf
Materials
Processes
Rocks
Stick

More quotes by 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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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.
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If you've ever come across a tree that you've lived with for many years and then one day it's blown over, there's incredible shock and violence about that.
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Once the fired stone is out of the kiln, it is still possible to mentally reconstruct it in its original form.
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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There are occasions when I have moved boulders, but I'm reluctant to, especially ones that have been rooted in a place for many years.
Andy Goldsworthy
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When I make a work, I often take it to the very edge of its collapse, and that's a very beautiful balance.
Andy Goldsworthy
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My art recognizes the human place, the human context - especially in Britain, which is a landscape so worked by people for thousands of years, written, deeply ingrained with the presence of people.
Andy Goldsworthy
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It's frightening and unnerving to watch a stone melt.
Andy Goldsworthy
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My art is an attempt to reach beyond the surface appearance. I want to see growth in wood, time in stone, nature in a city, and I do not mean its parks but a deeper understanding that a city is nature too-the ground upon which it is built, the stone with which it is made.
Andy Goldsworthy
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Fire is the origin of stone.By working the stone with heat, I am returning it to its source.
Andy Goldsworthy
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It's just that when I work on someone else's land, it makes me aware of the social nature of that landscape.
Andy Goldsworthy
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My sculpture can last for days or a few seconds - what is important to me is the experience of making. I leave all my work outside and often return to watch it decay.
Andy Goldsworthy
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Three or four stones in one firing will all react differently. I try to achieve a balance between those that haven't progressed enough and those about to go too far.
Andy Goldsworthy
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Art is not a career - it's a life.
Andy Goldsworthy
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It's art that's taught me to think and to write.
Andy Goldsworthy
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I did tests on small stones before collecting and committing myself to the larger ones.
Andy Goldsworthy
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When I do the permanent projects or the big projects, when a work is finished, that's the beginning of its life.
Andy Goldsworthy
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I take the opportunity each day offers.
Andy Goldsworthy
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I see my work plagiarized in gardening programmes and decorating programmes and car adverts, and I suppose I have to accept that's just the way art gets assimilated into culture.
Andy Goldsworthy