Quote

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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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
Written
Context
Art
Britain
Place
Landscape
Human
Thousands
Humans
Deeply
Years
Presence
People
Worked
Ingrained
Especially
Recognizes

More quotes by Andy Goldsworthy

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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.
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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Snow provokes responses that reach right back to childhood.
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 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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There's a huge number of things that are occurring with the ice works which fascinate me enormously, but it's driven by this kind of frantic race against time. And whilst that creates a huge amount of tension and problems, it's a tension that I think I feed off.
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
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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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The difference between a theatre with and without an audience is enormous. There is a palpable, critical energy created by the presence of the audience.
Andy Goldsworthy
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In contact with materials, I can see so much more with my hands than I can just with my eyes. I'm a participant, not a spectator. I see myself both as an object and a material, and the human presence is really important to the landscapes in which I work.
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
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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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Nature, for me is raw and dangerous and difficult and beautiful and unnerving.
Andy Goldsworthy
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I just see myself as an object in the final image. I know I'm experiencing it when I'm there working on it. I'm there to be worked with, as anything else that I work with.
Andy Goldsworthy
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The photography is not the aim of the work the articulation of the work through photography is another way of understanding what's going on and what's happening outside.
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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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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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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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