Andy Goldsworthy

"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 snow on top of a mountain in late May or June. There's something very powerful about finding snow in summer. It's as if the whole of winter has drained through that white hole — a concentration of winter."

"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. Sometimes it's difficult to say if something has worked or not. 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."

"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 weekend before going back to the nitty-gritty of urban life. But anybody who works the land knows it's not like that. Nature can be harsh – difficult and brutal, as well as beautiful. You couldn't walk five minutes from here without coming across something that is dead or decaying."

""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 magazine (February 1997)"