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I'm dealing with the most important things there are: life and nature. If this doesn't work, if this doesn't sustain me, I can't go back to nature. I'm right there. There's nowhere to go, and that frightens me.

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
Right
Frightens
Important
Sustain
Work
Nowhere
Things
Dealing
Life
Importance
Doesn
Nature
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More quotes by Andy Goldsworthy

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I have worked with this red all over the world - in Japan, California, France, Britain, Australia - a vein running round the earth. It has taught me about the flow, energy and life that connects one place with another.
Andy Goldsworthy
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Design implies a sense of mapping something out and then you follow the plan.
Andy Goldsworthy
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Understanding the materials I work with... gives me a deeper understanding of my place. And it's helped me make sense of the changes that are happening to me as I grow older.
Andy Goldsworthy
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It's art that's taught me to think and to write.
Andy Goldsworthy
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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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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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Abandoning the project was incredibly stressful after having gone through the process of building the room, installing the kiln, collecting the stones, sitting with the kiln day and night as it came to temperature, experiencing the failures.
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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I knew the tree when it grew, and the tree is now gone. The farmers cut it up, and it's become firewood. And there's this tremendous sense of absence and shock and violence attendant to that collapsing tree.
Andy Goldsworthy
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It's frightening and unnerving to watch a stone melt.
Andy Goldsworthy
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If you repeat something, it can become pointless. Some things can repeat and be endlessly fascinating.
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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Ephemeral work made outside, for and about a day, lies at the core of my art and its making must be kept private.
Andy Goldsworthy
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Time gives growth, it gives continuity and it gives change. And in the case of some sculptures, time gives a patina to them.
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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I think that any sculpture is a response to its environment. It can be brought to life or put to sleep by the environment.
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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Movement, change, light, growth, and decay are the life-blood of nature, the energies that I try to tap through my work.
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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Beauty is what sustains things, although beauty is underwritten by pain and fear.
Andy Goldsworthy