Andy Goldsworthy Quotes

Quotes about:

• 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.

  Andy Goldsworthy

  Nature, Connections, Separation

  116 Copy quote

• 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

  Work Out, Important, Lasts

  Andy Goldsworthy (1985). “Rain, sun, snow, hail, mist, calm”

  60 Copy quote

• There is life in a stone. Any stone that sits in a field or lies on a beach takes on the memory of that place. You can feel that stones have witnessed so many things.

  Andy Goldsworthy

  Beach, Nature, Memories

  62 Copy quote

• 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.

  Andy Goldsworthy

  Art, Weather, Keys

  61 Copy quote

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

  Andy Goldsworthy

  Would Be, One Word, Ifs

  18 Copy quote

• Everything has the energy of its making inside it.

  Andy Goldsworthy

  Energy

  "Natural talent" By Tim Adams, www.theguardian.com. March 10, 2007.

  6 Copy quote

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

  Andy Goldsworthy

  Beautiful, Dangerous, Difficult

  34 Copy quote

• 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

  Eye, Hands, Important

  "Andy Goldsworthy Goes Into The Wind". Interview with Katherine Cusumano, www.interviewmagazine.com. October 26, 2015.

  45 Copy quote

• 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

  Dying, Landscape, Something New

  "Searching for the Window Into Nature's Soul". Smithsonian magazine, February 1997.

  30 Copy quote

• 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

  Beautiful, Balance, Collapse

  21 Copy quote

• Looking, touching, material, place and form are all inseparable from the resulting work. It is difficult to say where one stops and another begins. The energy and space around a material are as important as the energy and space within. The weather--rain, sun, snow, hail, mist, calm--is that external space made visible. When I touch a rock, I am touching and working the space around it. It is not independent of its surroundings, and the way it sits tells how it came to be there.

  Andy Goldsworthy

  Rain, Independent, Rocks

  46 Copy quote

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

  Andy Goldsworthy

  Blood, Light, Growth

  "Philosophy and the Arts: Collected Essays". Book by Bert Olivier, 2009.

  17 Copy quote

• Beauty is what sustains things, although beauty is underwritten by pain and fear.

  Andy Goldsworthy

  Beauty, Pain

  10 Copy quote

• 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.

  Andy Goldsworthy

  Ideas, Differences, Would Be

  Interview with Conrad Bodman, 2001.

  33 Copy quote

• Snow provokes responses that reach right back to childhood.

  Andy Goldsworthy

  Winter, Snow, Childhood

  Andy Goldsworthy (2001). “Midsummer Snowballs”, Harry N. Abrams

  41 Copy quote

• People also leave presence in a place even when they are no longer there.

  Andy Goldsworthy

  Artist, People

  Andy Goldsworthy (2001). “Midsummer Snowballs”, Harry N. Abrams

  20 Copy quote

• 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

  Rocks, Sticks, Want

  "The lie of the land" by Richard Mabey, www.theguardian.com. March 31, 2007.

  20 Copy quote

• A stone is ingrained with geological and historical memories.

  Andy Goldsworthy

  Memories, Historical, Stones

  8 Copy quote

• 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.

  Andy Goldsworthy

  Art, Lying, Trying

  35 Copy quote

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

  Andy Goldsworthy

  Time, Giving, Growth

  38 Copy quote

• I think that any sculpture is a response to its environment. It can be brought to life or put to sleep by the environment.

  Andy Goldsworthy

  Sleep, Thinking, Sculpture

  "Andy Goldsworthy goes into the wild". Interview with Katherine Cusumano, www.interviewmagazine.com. October 26, 2015.

  32 Copy quote

• My approach to photograph is kept simple, almost routine. All work, good and bad, is documented. I use standard film, a standard lens and no filters. Each work grows, strays, decays-integral parts of a cycle which the photograph shows at its height, marking the moment when the work is most alive. There is an intensity about a work at its peak that I hope is expresses in the image. Process and decay are implicit.

  Andy Goldsworthy

  Simple, Use, Decay

  25 Copy quote

• 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.

  Andy Goldsworthy

  Giving, Understanding, Grows

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  Trying, Important, Stones

  13 Copy quote

• 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

  Country, New York, People

  "Sculptor Turns Rain, Ice And Trees Into 'Ephemeral Works'". "Fresh Air" with Terry Gross, www.npr.org. October 8, 2015.

  14 Copy quote

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