Andy Goldsworthy quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Andy Goldsworthy

Andy Goldsworthy Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Andy Goldsworthy on Wise Famous Quotes.

Everything has the energy of its making inside it.

Once the fired stone is out of the kiln, it is still possible to mentally reconstruct it in its original form.

I go way beyond just the wood and stone but to the process of growth and farming and the tensions between the two.

When I make a work, I often take it to the very edge of its collapse, and that's a very beautiful balance.

I'm very fortunate to be able to do what I do and live the way I do.

As you grow older you realize that art has an enormous effect. It's frightening sometimes to think of the effect that we can have.

Snow provokes responses that reach right back to childhood.

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

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

It's art that's taught me to think and to write.

If you lay in the rain, every rain shower, storm, whatever, is different. Every surface is different.

The first snowball I froze was put in my mother's deep freeze when I was in my early 20s.

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

The early firings contained many stones.

I'm not a performer, in that I don't like the public, but I work in that respect.

Even in winter an isolated patch of snow has a special quality.

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

If you repeat something, it can become pointless. Some things can repeat and be endlessly fascinating.

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

The main source of my income is through the commissions of the large-scale works and big sculptures, the projects.

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.

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

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.

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

My work comes first, reasons for it follow.

I think that I'm always trying to get beyond the surface appearance of things, to go beyond what I can just see.

The essence of drawing is the line exploring space.

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

I did tests on small stones before collecting and committing myself to the larger ones.

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

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

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.

The things that I make are that which a person will make. They're not meant to mimic nature. They are nothing but the result of a hand of a person.

A stone is ingrained with geological and historical memories.

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.

Fire is the origin of stone. By working the stone with heat, I am returning it to its source.

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

Art is not a career - it's a life.

It's just that when I work on someone else's land, it makes me aware of the social nature of that landscape.

Complete control can be the death of a work.

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.

We leave our presence in the pavement. We're walking over it, sitting on steps.

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

There are occasions when I have moved boulders, but I'm reluctant to, especially ones that have been rooted in a place for many years.

We often forget that we are nature ...

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

People are the nature of the city, and you can feel it in the pavement.

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.

I take the opportunity each day offers.

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

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

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

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

I enjoy working in a quiet and subversive way.

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

I'm cautious about using fire. It can become theatrical. I am interested in the heat, not the flames.