Andy Goldsworthy Quotes

Abandoning the project was incredibly stressful after having gone through the process of building the room, installing the kiln, collecting the stones, sitting with the kiln day and night as it came to temperature, experiencing the failures.

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.

If I had to describe my work in one word, that word would be time.

The underlying tension of a lot of my art is to try and look through the surface appearance of things. Inevitably, one way of getting beneath the surface is to introduce a hole, a window into what lies below.

Fire is the origin of stone. By working the stone with heat, I am returning it to its source.

Understanding the materials I work with… gives me a deeper understanding of my place. And it’s helped me make sense of the changes that are happening to me as I grow older.

The reason why the stone is red is its iron content, which is also why our blood is red.

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.

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

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.

I have walked around the same streets so many times, and then seen a place that had been hidden to me. I now know the sites in a way that makes me think I could have made better use of the connections between place and snowball.

Snow provokes responses that reach right back to childhood.

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

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.

The things that I make are that which a person will make. They’re not meant to mimic nature. They are nothing but the result of a hand of a person.

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.

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.

I enjoy working in a quiet and subversive way.

I soon realised that what had happened on a small scale cannot necessarily be repeated on a larger scale. The stones were so big that the amount of heat required was prohibitively expensive and wasteful.

The early firings contained many stones.

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.

As with all my work, whether it’s a leaf on a rock or ice on a rock, I’m trying to get beneath the surface appearance of things. Working the surface of a stone is an attempt to understand the internal energy of the stone.

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.

I have worked with this red all over the world – in Japan, California, France, Britain, Australia – a vein running round the earth. It has taught me about the flow, energy and life that connects one place with another.

When I make a work, I often take it to the very edge of its collapse, and that’s a very beautiful balance.

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 realization. I’ve had what I thought were great ideas that just didn’t work.

It’s frightening and unnerving to watch a stone melt.

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

Nature, for me is raw and dangerous and difficult and beautiful and unnerving.

When I’m working with materials it’s not just the leaf or the stone, it’s the processes that are behind them that are important. That’s what I’m trying to understand, not a single isolated object but nature as a whole.