Andy Goldsworthy Quotes

Andy Goldsworthy shares fleeting reflections on nature and art.

30 quotes

1. My work comes first, reasons for it follow.

2. Ephemeral work made outside, for and about a day, lies at the core of my art and its making must be kept private.

3. You must have something new in a landscape as well as something old, something that's dying and something that's being born.

4. A snowball is simple, direct and familiar to most of us. I use this simplicity as a container for feelings and ideas that function on many levels. Occasionally I have come across a last patch of snow on top of a mountain in late May or June. There's something very powerful about finding snow in summer. It's as if the whole of winter has drained through that white hole - a concentration of winter.

5. 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 realisation. I've had what I thought were great ideas that just didn't work. Sometimes it's difficult to say if something has worked or not. 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.

6. Movement, change, light, growth, and decay are the life-blood of nature, the energies that I try to tap through my work.

7. 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.

8. One of the most engaging artists to emerge from Great Britain in the last decade. ~ Art in America

9. The skepticism of the art establishment seems to be based on, as much as anything, a kind of big-city prejudice against work so free from urban angst. ~ Lynn Macritchie in Art in America (April 1995)

10. A new kind of poetry is created when Andy Goldsworthy works with stone, wood and water - our world never looks quite the same again ~ 'Searching for the window into nature's soul', Smithsonian magazine (February 1997)

11. If I had to describe my work in one word, that word would be time.

12. Winter makes a bridge between one year and another and, in this case, one century and the next.

13. 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.

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

15. Time gives growth, it gives continuity and it gives change. And in the case of some sculptures, time gives a patina to them.

16. Sometimes you need to stop doing something to really see it afresh.

17. I've laid down in dried up streambeds, leaving a shadow. And then, five minutes later, it's flash flooded, and where I once laid is now running water, which would've washed me away, you know? There's that power and danger often in places that look so calm and pastoral to begin with.

18. When I do the permanent projects or the big projects, when a work is finished, that's the beginning of its life.

19. Nature, for me is raw and dangerous and difficult and beautiful and unnerving.

20. 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.

21. Design implies a sense of mapping something out and then you follow the plan.

22. The reason why the stone is red is its iron content, which is also why our blood is red.

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

24. 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.

25. I am not a performer but occasionally I deliberately work in a public context. Some sculptures need the movement of people around them to work.

26. 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.

27. I see my work plagiarized in gardening programmes and decorating programmes and car adverts, and I suppose I have to accept that's just the way art gets assimilated into culture.

28. 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.

29. Art for me is a form of nourishment. I need the land. I need it.

30. I enjoy working in a quiet and subversive way.