Today’s Art Wednesday will focus on Andy Goldsworthy. Some years ago, my friend Jason Brumley introduced me to Goldsworthy’s art, and I was immediately taken by it. Perhaps you will be to.
Andy Goldsworthy is a British environmental sculptor and photographer who creates site-specific art set in natural and urban places. He lives in Scotland. His work is the product of paying attention to what is happening in the world around him.
“Each work grows, stays, decays – integral parts of a cycle which the photo shows at its heights, marking the moment when the work is most alive. There is an intensity about a work at its peak that I hope is expressed in the image.” – Andy Goldsworthy
“I think it’s incredibly brave to be working with flowers and leaves and petals. But I have to: I can’t edit the materials I work with. My remit is to work with nature as a whole.” – Andy Goldsworthy
“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.” – Andy Goldsworthy
“Ideas must be put to the test. That’s why we make things, otherwise they’d 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 it is snowing, I work with snow, at leaf-fall it will be with leaves; a blown-over tree becomes a source of twigs and branches. I stop at a place or pick up a material because I feel that there is something to be discovered.” – Andy Goldsworthy
As we consider Andy Goldsworthy’s work, it seems appropriate to conclude today’s Art Wednesday with this quote from Annie Dillard: “Beauty and grace are preformed whether or not we will sense them. The least we can do it try to be there.”
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