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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The early firings contained many stones.
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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You must have something new in a landscape as well as something old, something that's dying and something that's being born.
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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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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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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We often forget that WE ARE NATURE. Nature is not something separate from us. So when we say that we have lost our connection to nature, we’ve lost our connection to ourselves.
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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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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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 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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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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Art is not a career - it's a life.
Andy Goldsworthy
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The process of growth is obviously critical to my understanding of the land and myself. So the process is far more unpredictable with far more compromises with the day, the weather, the material.
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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I have six acres in front of my own house, which I very rarely work on. Most of the work occurs on farmers' fields around me. And I like the discipline of working on other people's land.
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 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's art that's taught me to think and to write.
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