Andy Goldsworthy Quotes

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.

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.

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.

I take the opportunity each day offers.

time confined into blind caves or extended through tunnels, responds to the call of infinity, which teases with its promise of freedom. outside the body, time is a pair of compasses in the hands of eternity, but inside it is a pendulum, fastened to the heart. the heart takes its measure from the lengthening swing of the pendulum surveying what time is left. in its own rhythm time spreads itself wildly here and there and is crippled elsewhere. its unequally distributed weight wounds my body - that is how the particularities of my life are manifest.

Fear always accompanies the making of art, generated by the shock of seeing an idea taking its form. A sculpture in the mind is safe and secure--the actual work rarely behaves as intended.

My art helps make sense of things.

A tension develops between what I want and what is emerging. This tension is important to the feeling of the piece.

At the time I had begun experimenting with creating land art, which I’d felt drawn to after seeing the work of Andy Goldsworthy.

It’s like the artwork of Andy Goldsworthy, or anyone who delights in anything ephemeral. The charm in a bottle of wine, the craft, all the work that goes into it . . . actually delighting in the fact that it’s perishable and goes away I find really helpful. I’ve gotten a lot of miles out of a beautiful bottle of wine, not just for the taste and the buzz, but the symbolism of delighting in something that goes away.

Sometimes I feel that the source of a sculpture's energy comes from the effort of trying to regain a sense of balance lost at some point when I lacked control or concentration or perhaps made an error of judgment. Such moments happen all the time in the making of a sculpture. Not to experience uncertainty or to make no mistakes would in a sense render the making of a sculpture pointless. Any new work should challenge my understanding of both how and why a sculpture should be made.