Top Andy Goldsworthy Quotes

Andy Goldsworthy Biography

Andy Goldsworthy OBE (born 26 July 1956) is a British sculptor, photographer and environmentalist producing site-specific sculpture and land art situated in natural and urban settings. He lives and works in Scotland.

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Andy Goldsworthy Quotes

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.

Hand, Hands, Nature, Nothing, Persons, Results

Everything has the energy of its making inside it.

Energy, Everything, Making

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.

Cutting, Farmers, Gone, Grew, Shock, Tree

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.

Artist, Building, Experiencing, Gone, Having, Night

Snow provokes responses that reach right back to childhood.

Winter, Snow, Childhood, Responses, Reach, Provokes

I soon realised that what had happened on a small scale cannot necessarily be repeated on a larger scale. The stones were so big that the amount of heat required was prohibitively expensive and wasteful.

Big, Bigs, Heat, Realised, Scale, Stones

It's frightening and unnerving to watch a stone melt.

Artist, Melt, Scary, Unnerving, Watch, Watches

Ideas must be put to the test. That's why we make things; otherwise they would be no more than ideas. There is often a huge difference between an idea and its realization. I've had what I thought were great ideas that just didn't work.

Differences, Huge, Ideas, Things, Thought, Would Be

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.

Deeper, Giving, Grows, Helped, Understanding

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.

Beautiful, Harsh, Minutes, Nature, Materials

Movement, change, light, growth and decay are the lifeblood of nature, the energies that I I try to tap through my work. I need the shock of touch, the resistance of place, materials and weather, the earth as my source. Nature is in a state of change and that change is the key to understanding. I want my art to be sensitive and alert to changes in material, season and weather. Each work grows, stays, decays. Process and decay are implicit. Transience in my work reflects what I find in nature.

Art, Change, Keys, Sensitive, Source, Weather

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.

Work Out, Important, Watches, Return, Sculpture, Seconds

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.

Experiencing, Finals, Knows, Objects, Worked, Working

I love the winter. Well, I love all the seasons, but the winter is possibly one of the most intense.

Intense, Possibly, Seasons, Wells, Winter

For me looking, touching, material, place and form are all inseparable from the resulting work. It is difficult to say where one stops and another begins. Place is found by walking, direction determined by weather and season. I take the opportunity each day offers: if it is snowing, I work in snow, at leaf-fall it will be leaves; a blown over tree becomes a source of twigs and branches.

Blown, Fall, Opportunity, Twigs, Weather, Work

I'm an artist living in a small, Scottish village. So one would expect to be treated with some sort of caution. And the village and the farmers have shown enormous tolerance of me and interest in what I do. I mean, they don't necessarily understand what I'm doing all the time. But they, you know, I think they respect what I do and that there is a connection between what they do with the land and what I do, you know, that we're both dependent on weather and respond to that.

Artist, Expect, Mean, Thinking, Tolerance

When I was at art school, a lot of art education is about art being a means of self-expression, and as an 18-year-old I didn't know if I had a huge amount I wanted to express. It was a big moment when I decided I wanted to shift the emphasis or the intention of my art from something I disgorged myself upon and something that actually fed me or made me see the world or understand the world.

Art, Fed, Know, Mean, School

I'm very fortunate to be able to do what I do and live the way I do.

Able, Fortunate, Live, Way

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.

Country, Like, New York, People, Problem, Walk

The underlying tension of a lot of my art is to try and look through the surface appearance of things. Inevitably, one way of getting beneath the surface is to introduce a hole, a window into what lies below.

Art, Look, Lying, Trying, Way

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Andy Goldsworthy Biography

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