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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TAGS & TOPICS

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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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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The early firings contained many stones.
Andy Goldsworthy
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Winter makes a bridge between one year and another and, in this case, one century and the next.
Andy Goldsworthy
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Sometimes you need to stop doing something to really see it afresh.
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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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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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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I take the opportunity each day offers.
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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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 first snowball I froze was put in my mother's deep freeze when I was in my early 20s.
Andy Goldsworthy
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When I do the permanent projects or the big projects, when a work is finished, that's the beginning of its life.
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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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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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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I enjoy working in a quiet and subversive way.
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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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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There are occasions when I have moved boulders, but I'm reluctant to, especially ones that have been rooted in a place for many years.
Andy Goldsworthy
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I have to understand the nature of change. And I cannot just work with stone or the more permanent materials. I need to work with leaves and ice and snow and mud and clay and water and the rising tide and the wind and all these.
Andy Goldsworthy