Andy Goldsworthy
Andy Goldsworthy
Andy Goldsworthy, OBEis a British sculptor, photographer and environmentalist producing site-specific sculpture and land art situated in natural and urban settings. He lives and works in Scotland...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionSculptor
Date of Birth26 July 1956
time giving growth
Time gives growth, it gives continuity and it gives change. And in the case of some sculptures, time gives a patina to them.
ideas differences would-be
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.
people
People also leave presence in a place even when they are no longer there.
years tree one-day
If you've ever come across a tree that you've lived with for many years and then one day it's blown over, there's incredible shock and violence about that.
rain independent rocks
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.
art lying trying
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.
art light weather
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.
design mapping plans
Design implies a sense of mapping something out and then you follow the plan.
thinking weather forever
I think I have been fashioned by the fickle weather of Britain that it is - it's forever changing. There's no kind of constant sun or dry weather or freezing weather, and I'm always having to change and adapt to that.
work-out important sculpture
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.
connections forget lost
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.
sites walked
I have walked around the same streets so many times, and then seen a place that had been hidden to me. I now know the sites in a way that makes me think I could have made better use of the connections between place and snowball.
far spirit tried
The first stone was just tried in the spirit of experimentation. The opening of the stone was far more interesting than the drawing that I had done on it.
attempt contain growth hopeless melt released seen
Some snowballs contain seeds, which will be released in the melt in what could be seen as a hopeless attempt at growth in a built-up environment.