Andy Goldsworthy: Working

“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

"Stone River Enters Stanford University's Outdoor Art Collection" (4 September 2001)

“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”

Andy Goldsworthy

April 1995

Art

“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.”

Andy Goldsworthy

Interview with Conrad Bodman, curator at the Barbican Arts Centre (2001)
Context: 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.

Idea

“My work comes first, reasons for it follow.”

Andy Goldsworthy

"Residency on Earth" in Art in America (April, 1995)

“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

He's got the whole world in his hands http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/3663966/Hes-got-the-whole-world-in-his-hands.html, The Telegraph (24 March 2007)

Life , Beauty , Nature , Dead

“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

"Residency on Earth" in Art in America (April, 1995)

Art

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

Andy Goldsworthy

Stone River Enters Stanford University's Outdoor Art Collection http://ccva.stanford.edu/Goldsworthy.html (4 September 2001)

Life , Nature , Light , Change