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I can't edit the materials I work with. My remit is to work with nature as a whole.

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
Edits
Materials
Nature
Whole
Work
Remit
Edit

More quotes by Andy Goldsworthy

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The relationship between the public and the artist is complex and difficult to explain. There is a fine line between using this critical energy creatively and pandering to it.
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 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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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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I'm cautious about using fire. It can become theatrical. I am interested in the heat, not the flames.
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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Generally in New York, people just walk over you with no problem about that. Other countries, people want to resuscitate you, like, after a bit.
Andy Goldsworthy
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A stone is ingrained with geological and historical memories.
Andy Goldsworthy
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The main reason I went to digital was because I got time-lapse, video, and still images all in one camera. Having a minimal amount of gear is really important for someone who wants to walk around. That allowed me to have this flexibility to document things in different ways.
Andy Goldsworthy
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Snow provokes responses that reach right back to childhood.
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 stones tear like flesh, rather than breaking. Although what happens is violent, it is a violence that is in stone. A tear is more unnerving than a break.
Andy Goldsworthy
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There is life in a stone. Any stone that sits in a field or lies on a beach takes on the memory of that place. You can feel that stones have witnessed so many things.
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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Art for me is a form of nourishment. I need the land. I need it.
Andy Goldsworthy
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Even in winter an isolated patch of snow has a special quality.
Andy Goldsworthy
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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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Not being able to touch is sometimes as interesting as being able to touch.
Andy Goldsworthy
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Complete control can be the death of a work.
Andy Goldsworthy
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One of the beauties of art is that it reflects an artist's entire life. What I've learned over the past 30 years is really beginning to inform what I make. I hope that process continues until I die.
Andy Goldsworthy