Andy Goldsworthy

Andy Goldsworthy (born 20 april 1956) is a British artist and photographer famous for his site specific sculpture and land art.

Quotes

 * My work comes first, reasons for it follow.
 * "Residency on Earth" in Art in America (April, 1995)


 * Ephemeral work made outside, for and about a day, lies at the core of my art and its making must be kept private.
 * "Residency on Earth" in Art in America (April, 1995)


 * You must have something new in a landscape as well as something old, something that's dying and something that's being born.
 * "Searching for the window into nature's soul" Smithsonian magazine (February 1997)


 * 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.
 * Interview with Conrad Bodman, curator at the Barbican Arts Centre (2001)


 * 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.
 * Interview with Conrad Bodman, curator at the Barbican Arts Centre (2001)


 * Movement, change, light, growth, and decay are the life-blood of nature, the energies that I try to tap through my work.
 * Stone River Enters Stanford University's Outdoor Art Collection (4 September 2001)


 * 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.
 * "Stone River Enters Stanford University's Outdoor Art Collection" (4 September 2001)


 * I find some of my new works disturbing, just as I find nature as a whole disturbing. The landscape is often perceived as pastoral, pretty, beautiful – something to be enjoyed as a backdrop to your weekend before going back to the nitty-gritty of urban life. But anybody who works the land knows it's not like that. 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.
 * He's got the whole world in his hands, The Telegraph (24 March 2007)


 * "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.
 * He's got the whole world in his hands, The Telegraph (24 March 2007)

Quotes of others about Goldsworthy

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


 * 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)


 * 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)