Quote

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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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
Grew
Attendant
Violence
Collapsing
Knew
Farmers
Gone
Tremendous
Sense
Shock
Become
Absence
Cutting
Tree
Firewood

More quotes by Andy Goldsworthy

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Complete control can be the death of a work.
Andy Goldsworthy
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A lot of my work is like picking potatoes you have to get into the rhythm of it. It is different than patience. It is not thinking. It is working with the rhythm.
Andy Goldsworthy
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Even in winter an isolated patch of snow has a special quality.
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We often forget that we are nature.
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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As you grow older you realize that art has an enormous effect. It's frightening sometimes to think of the effect that we can have.
Andy Goldsworthy
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I love the winter. Well, I love all the seasons, but the winter is possibly one of the most intense.
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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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 reason why the stone is red is its iron content, which is also why our blood is red.
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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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'm not a performer, in that I don't like the public, but I work in that respect.
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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The main source of my income is through the commissions of the large-scale works and big sculptures, the projects.
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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If I'm going to understand the land, I have to understand the wind, the snow, the rain, the leaves, the ice, and changes in temperature. It just reflects a reality for me.
Andy Goldsworthy
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Snow provokes responses that reach right back to childhood.
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 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