Andy Goldsworthy Quotes

17 Sourced Quotes

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.

Andy Goldsworthy
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
It takes between three and six hours to make each snowball, depending on snow quality. Wet snow is quick to work with but also quick to thaw, which can lead to a tense journey to the cold store.

Andy Goldsworthy
Confrontation is something that I accept as part of the project though not its purpose.

Andy Goldsworthy
The relationship between the public and the artist is complex and difficult to explain. There is a fine line between using this critical energy creatively and pandering to it.

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

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

Andy Goldsworthy
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.

Andy Goldsworthy
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.

Andy Goldsworthy
Not being able to touch is sometimes as interesting as being able to touch.

Andy Goldsworthy
I have worked with this red all over the world - in Japan, California, France, Britain, Australia - a vein running round the earth. It has taught me about the flow, energy and life that connects one place with another.

Andy Goldsworthy
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
Some of the snowballs have a kind of animal energy. Not just because of the materials inside them, but in the way that they appear caged, captured.

Andy Goldsworthy
The difference between a theatre with and without an audience is enormous. There is a palpable, critical energy created by the presence of the audience.

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

Andy Goldsworthy
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.

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

Andy Goldsworthy