Andy Goldsworthy Quotes

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

If I'm going to understand the land, I have to understand the wind, the snow, the rain, the leaves, the ice, and changes in temperature. It just reflects a reality for me.

A stone is ingrained with geological and historical memories.

Complete control can be the death of a work.

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

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

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

I just see myself as an object in the final image. I know I'm experiencing it when I'm there working on it. I'm there to be worked with, as anything else that I work with.

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

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.

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.

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

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

We often forget that we are nature.

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

I take the opportunity each day offers.

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.

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

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.

I have six acres in front of my own house, which I very rarely work on. Most of the work occurs on farmers' fields around me. And I like the discipline of working on other people's land.

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

The early firings contained many stones.

I can't edit the materials I work with. My remit is to work with nature as a whole.

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.

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

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

I enjoy working in a quiet and subversive way.

My work comes first, reasons for it follow.

Everything has the energy of its making inside it.

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.

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