Andy Goldsworthy Quotes

• My art is an attempt to reach beyond the surface appearance. I want to see growth in wood, time in stone, nature in a city, and I do not mean its parks but a deeper understanding that a city is nature too-the ground upon which it is built, the stone with which it is made.

  Andy Goldsworthy

  Topics in Art
• 

  Mistakes are proof that you are trying.

  Unknown

  Topics in Encouragement, Mistake, Work

  Tags in Try, Proof, Trying

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

  Andy Goldsworthy

• Three or four stones in one firing will all react differently. I try to achieve a balance between those that haven’t progressed enough and those about to go too far.

  Andy Goldsworthy

• The stones tear like flesh, rather than breaking. Although what happens is violent, it is a violence that is in stone. A tear is more unnerving than a break.

  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

• The hardened mass of liquid stones had much stronger qualities than those which had simply torn. The skin remained a recognisable part of the molten stone.

  Andy Goldsworthy

• 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.

  Andy Goldsworthy

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

  Andy Goldsworthy

• The early firings contained many stones.

  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

• Stones are checked every so often to see if any have split or at worst exploded. An explosion can leave debris in the elements so the firing has to be abandoned.

  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

• Snow provokes responses that reach right back to childhood.

  Andy Goldsworthy

• 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

• People do not realise that many of my works are done in urban places. I was brought up on the edge of Leeds, five miles from the city centre-on one side were fields and on the other, the city.

  Andy Goldsworthy

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

  Andy Goldsworthy

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

  Andy Goldsworthy

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

  Andy Goldsworthy

Andy Goldsworthy (38)

Birth:	26th July, 1956
Nationality:	British
Profession:	Environmentalist, Photographer, Sculptor

About

Andy Goldsworthy is 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. Goldsworthy studied fine art at Bradford College of Art and at Preston Polytechnic in Preston, Lancashire, receiving his Bachelor of Arts degree from the latter. In 1993, he received an honorary degree from the University of Bradford. He is currently an A.D. White Professor-At-Large at Cornell University. Photography plays a crucial role in his art due to its often ephemeral and transient state.

Related Authors

• Pierce Brosnan
• Derrick Jensen
• Wallace Stegner
• Daryl Hannah
• Andy Goldsworthy
• Rachel Carson
• Ansel Adams
• Linda Hogan
• Don Rittner
• Anita Roddick

Advertisement

Today's Anniversary - 22nd December

Births

• 1949 - Maurice Gibb
• 1823 - Thomas Wentworth Higginson
• 1948 - Steve Garvey
• 1908 - Max Bill
• 1972 - Vanessa Paradis

Deaths

• 1899 - Dwight L. Moody
• 1987 - Sir Henry Thomas Cotton
• 1998 - Virginia Graham
• 1943 - Beatrix Potter
• 1940 - Nathanael West