Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

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
Change
Leaves
Tide
Need
Stones
Tides
Needs
Materials
Clay
Work
Wind
Ice
Water
Stone
Understand
Rising
Nature
Permanent
Cannot
Snow
Mud

More quotes by Andy Goldsworthy

Image
The reason why the stone is red is its iron content, which is also why our blood is red.
Andy Goldsworthy
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Once the fired stone is out of the kiln, it is still possible to mentally reconstruct it in its original form.
Andy Goldsworthy
Image
Beauty is what sustains things, although beauty is underwritten by pain and fear.
Andy Goldsworthy
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Snow provokes responses that reach right back to childhood.
Andy Goldsworthy
Image
The main source of my income is through the commissions of the large-scale works and big sculptures, the projects.
Andy Goldsworthy
Image
I think I have been fashioned by the fickle weather of Britain that it is - it's forever changing. There's no kind of constant sun or dry weather or freezing weather, and I'm always having to change and adapt to that.
Andy Goldsworthy
Image
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
Image
I can't edit the materials I work with. My remit is to work with nature as a whole.
Andy Goldsworthy
Image
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
Image
A stone is ingrained with geological and historical memories.
Andy Goldsworthy
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Not being able to touch is sometimes as interesting as being able to touch.
Andy Goldsworthy
Image
Art is not a career - it's a life.
Andy Goldsworthy
Image
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