Quotes by Andy Goldsworthy

“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 nat...”

“I take the opportunity each day offers.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

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

“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 sn...”

“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 w...”

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

“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.”

“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 ...”

“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.”

“One of the most engaging artists to emerge from Great Britain in the last decade. ~ Art in America”

“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 (April 1995)”

“A new kind of poetry is created when Andy Goldsworthy works with stone, wood and water — our world never looks quite the same again ~ Searching for the window into nature's soul, Smithsonian magazi...”