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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

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

More quotes by 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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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 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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Photography is a way of putting distance between myself and the work which sometimes helps me to see more clearly what it is that I have made.
Andy Goldsworthy
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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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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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It's art that's taught me to think and to write.
Andy Goldsworthy
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The hardened mass of liquid stones had much stronger qualities than those which had simply torn. The skin remained a recognisable part of the molten stone.
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 British climate, although it is very wet, it is quite mild in winter. We don't get these severe - generally don't get severe winters.
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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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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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
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Nature, for me is raw and dangerous and difficult and beautiful and unnerving.
Andy Goldsworthy
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When I make a work, I often take it to the very edge of its collapse, and that's a very beautiful balance.
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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Generally in New York, people just walk over you with no problem about that. Other countries, people want to resuscitate you, like, after a bit.
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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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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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