Goldsworthy Quotes & Sayings

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. — Timothy Ferriss

It is widely believed that Christianity remained an essentially urban cult and that the population of the countryside clung for generations to the old beliefs. The word 'pagan' comes from paganus, or someone who lived in the countryside (pagus). Unfortunately, we know so little about the religious life in rural areas that this remains conjectural. Paganus was usually derogatory - something like 'yokel' or 'hick' would give the right idea - and may just reflect the common belief of urban dwellers that countrymen were dull and backward. — Adrian Goldsworthy

Quite openly, voters selected on the basis of perceived character and past behaviour rather than the views a candidate expressed. Where an individual's nature was not obvious, the Roman people tended to be drawn to a famous name, for there was a sense that virtue and ability were inherited. — Adrian Goldsworthy

I smiled, but internally, unseen, using no visible facial muscles. — Peter Goldsworthy

I want to get under the surface. When I work with a leaf, rock, stick, it is not just that material in itself, it is an opening into the processes of life within and around it. When I leave it, these processes continue. — Andy Goldsworthy

Everything has the energy of its making inside it. — Andy Goldsworthy

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. — Andy Goldsworthy

I enjoy working in a quiet and subversive way. — Andy Goldsworthy

Sovereignty means exercising kingly power. We use the word in relation to God meaning that there is absolutely nothing that he does not control. — Graeme Goldsworthy

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. — Andy Goldsworthy

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

As Cicero would later declare, 'For what is the life of a man, if it is not interwoven with the life of former generations by a sense of history?"3 — Adrian Goldsworthy

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

I tell you a secret about Chopin, piano is his best friend. More. He tells piano all his secrets." - piano teacher Eleanora Sivan. — Anna Goldsworthy

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. — Andy Goldsworthy

My approach to photograph is kept simple, almost routine. All work, good and bad, is documented. I use standard film, a standard lens and no filters. Each work grows, strays, decays-integral parts of a cycle which the photograph shows at its height, marking the moment when the work is most alive. There is an intensity about a work at its peak that I hope is expresses in the image. Process and decay are implicit. — Andy Goldsworthy

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

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

Looking, touching, material, place and form are all inseparable from the resulting work. It is difficult to say where one stops and another begins. The energy and space around a material are as important as the energy and space within. The weather
rain, sun, snow, hail, mist, calm
is that external space made visible. When I touch a rock, I am touching and working the space around it. It is not independent of its surroundings, and the way it sits tells how it came to be there. — Andy Goldsworthy

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

Winter makes a bridge between one year and another and, in this case, one century and the next. — Andy Goldsworthy

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

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. — Andy Goldsworthy

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. — Andy Goldsworthy

People also leave presence in a place even when they are no longer there. — Andy Goldsworthy

I take the opportunity each day offers. — Andy Goldsworthy

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. — Andy Goldsworthy

Snow provokes responses that reach right back to childhood. — Andy Goldsworthy

Complete control can be the death of a work. — Andy Goldsworthy

Time gives growth, it gives continuity and it gives change. And in the case of some sculptures, time gives a patina to them. — Andy Goldsworthy

Beauty is what sustains things, although beauty is underwritten by pain and fear. — Andy Goldsworthy

The essence of drawing is the line exploring space. — Andy Goldsworthy

My affection for you does not depend on those small things.'
Affection? To hear him admit it, to actually utter words of love, however understated, astonished me. — Peter Goldsworthy

The incarnation (becoming flesh) of God is at the very center of the gospel event by which God restores the true relationship between himself and the human race. — Graeme Goldsworthy

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. — Andy Goldsworthy

I never hear you practice."
He smiled: "Only those who are dirty need to wash. — Peter Goldsworthy

Caesar declared that an orator should 'avoid an unusual word as the helmsman of a ship avoided a reef'. — Adrian Goldsworthy

(Sulla gave the slave his freedom and then had the man thrown to his death — Adrian Goldsworthy

Roman women kept their name throughout their lives, and did not change it on marriage. — Adrian Goldsworthy

At Rome there were nothing even vaguely resembling modern political parties - although given the stifling impact of these, this may well have made it more rather than less democratic than many countries today - and each candidate for office competed as an individual. Only rarely did they advocate specific policies, although commenting on issues of current importance was more common. In the main voters looked more for a capable individual who once elected could do whatever the State required. — Adrian Goldsworthy

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. — Andy Goldsworthy

Julia. At the most basic level a Roman husband had only to utter the phrase 'take your things for yourself' (tuas res tibi habeto) to separate from his wife. — Adrian Goldsworthy

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

A constant flickering confetti of butterflies showered the town of Darwin. Designer insects, I think of them now: there was something enormously wasteful, extravagant even, about the profusion of patterns and shapes and brilliant colours. — Peter Goldsworthy

It's frightening and unnerving to watch a stone melt. — Andy Goldsworthy

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. — Andy Goldsworthy

I see my work plagiarized in gardening programmes and decorating programmes and car adverts, and I suppose I have to accept that's just the way art gets assimilated into culture. — 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 nature too-the ground upon which it is built, the stone with which it is made. — Andy Goldsworthy

Confrontation is something that I accept as part of the project though not its purpose. — Andy Goldsworthy

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

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

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. — Andy Goldsworthy

My work comes first, reasons for it follow. — Andy Goldsworthy

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. — Andy Goldsworthy

A stone is ingrained with geological and historical memories. — Andy Goldsworthy

As you grow older you realize that art has an enormous effect. It's frightening sometimes to think of the effect that we can have. — Andy Goldsworthy

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

The first snowball I froze was put in my mother's deep freeze when I was in my early 20s. — Andy Goldsworthy

People are the nature of the city, and you can feel it in the pavement. — Andy Goldsworthy

The tribune was betrayed by one of his own slaves and killed. — Adrian Goldsworthy

Tradition maintained that Rome had been founded in 753 BC. For the Romans this was Year One and subsequent events were formally dated as so many years from the 'foundation of the city' (ab urbe condita). — Adrian Goldsworthy

I am not a performer but occasionally I deliberately work in a public context. Some sculptures need the movement of people around them to work. — Andy Goldsworthy

The photography is not the aim of the work; the articulation of the work through photography is another way of understanding what's going on and what's happening outside. — Andy Goldsworthy

The early firings contained many stones. — Andy Goldsworthy

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. — Andy Goldsworthy

I'm very fortunate to be able to do what I do and live the way I do. — Andy Goldsworthy

The Bible is the one Word of the one God about the one way of salvation through the one Savior, Jesus Christ. — Graeme Goldsworthy

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. — Andy Goldsworthy

Only the second-rate never make mistakes — Peter Goldsworthy

I could set from memory a replica of the perfect Still Life she laid out on the table each morning: the carefully folded Advertiser, the two canary yellow hemispheres of grapefruit in their bowls, separated by a more richly yellowed cube of butter; the sky blue milk-jug and matching sugar bowl filled to the brim with their differently textured whitenesses; the pot of tea snug in its knitted navy blue cosy, the steam that rose invisibly from its spout suddenly rendered visible, swirling, where it entered the slanting morning light. — Peter Goldsworthy

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. — Andy Goldsworthy

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. — Andy Goldsworthy

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. — Andy Goldsworthy

Generally in New York, people just walk over you with no problem about that. Other countries, people want to resuscitate you, like, after a bit. — Andy Goldsworthy

Movement, change, light, growth and decay are the lifeblood of nature, the energies that I I try to tap through my work. I need the shock of touch, the resistance of place, materials and weather, the earth as my source. Nature is in a state of change and that change is the key to understanding. I want my art to be sensitive and alert to changes in material, season and weather. Each work grows, stays, decays. Process and decay are implicit. Transience in my work reflects what I find in nature. — Andy Goldsworthy

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. — Andy Goldsworthy

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. — Andy Goldsworthy

For me looking, touching, material, place and form are all inseparable from the resulting work. It is difficult to say where one stops and another begins. Place is found by walking, direction determined by weather and season. I take the opportunity each day offers: if it is snowing, I work in snow, at leaf-fall it will be leaves; a blown over tree becomes a source of twigs and branches. — Andy Goldsworthy

It takes between three and six hours to make each snowball, depending on snow quality. Wet snow is quick to work with but also quick to thaw, which can lead to a tense journey to the cold store. — Andy Goldsworthy

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. — Andy Goldsworthy

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. — Andy Goldsworthy

I've laid down in dried up streambeds, leaving a shadow. And then, five minutes later, it's flash flooded, and where I once laid is now running water, which would've washed me away, you know? There's that power and danger often in places that look so calm and pastoral to begin with. — Andy Goldsworthy

I'm cautious about using fire. It can become theatrical. I am interested in the heat, not the flames. — Andy Goldsworthy

The main reason I went to digital was because I got time-lapse, video, and still images all in one camera. Having a minimal amount of gear is really important for someone who wants to walk around. That allowed me to have this flexibility to document things in different ways. — Andy Goldsworthy

I knew the tree when it grew, and the tree is now gone. The farmers cut it up, and it's become firewood. And there's this tremendous sense of absence and shock and violence attendant to that collapsing tree. — Andy Goldsworthy

When I was at art school, a lot of art education is about art being a means of self-expression, and as an 18-year-old I didn't know if I had a huge amount I wanted to express. It was a big moment when I decided I wanted to shift the emphasis or the intention of my art from something I disgorged myself upon and something that actually fed me or made me see the world or understand the world. — Andy Goldsworthy

I did tests on small stones before collecting and committing myself to the larger ones. — Andy Goldsworthy

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

I'm not a performer, in that I don't like the public, but I work in that respect. — Andy Goldsworthy

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

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

For what is the life of a man, if it is not interwoven with the life of former generations by as sense of history. [Cicero, quoted by Goldsworthy in his Augustus] — Adrian Goldsworthy

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. — Andy Goldsworthy

At its most successful, my 'touch' looks into the heart of nature; most days I don't even get close. These things are all part of a transient process that I cannot understand unless my touch is also transient - only in this way can the cycle remain unbroken and the process be complete. — Andy Goldsworthy

The strength of Ray Ortlund's study of Proverbs is its Christ-centeredness. The wisdom of Proverbs loses none of its practical value, but rather is given its ultimate fulfillment as an expression of the wisdom of Christ. — Graeme Goldsworthy

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. — Andy Goldsworthy

The truth of God's Word cannot be subject to the puny light of man's self-centred reason — Graeme Goldsworthy

Caesar was a serial seducer of married women. — Adrian Goldsworthy

At home, my mother dabbed at her brow with a wet flannel she kept in the fridge for that purpose. — Peter Goldsworthy

When I do the permanent projects or the big projects, when a work is finished, that's the beginning of its life. — Andy Goldsworthy