Andy Goldsworthy

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• 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)

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)