Goldsworthy, Untitled, 2018
I’m not motivated by any intention to improve on what’s there. I don’t think I can do that. But I’m motivated by a need to understand what’s there through making. I think the act of making is an amazing tool for understanding what’s there and establishing a connection with a place. The difference between looking and making is huge. And when I’m within that, I wouldn’t take out a box of paints and paint stuff, because I’m much more into finding the colors that are there and understanding the colors that are there—to understand the leaf and work with the leaf on the tree that it fell from. The material is a window into this lineage of growth and change, and that’s what I’m really interested in. It’s not just going out there to make images. Otherwise I could just fabricate them on the computer.
Art—in the form of drawing, painting, making things—has always been everything to me. It’s the only thing I’ve ever done. But when I was working on a farm, I remember one day we were collecting stones off the field, and I made a pile of stones. My brother was with me, and he started handing me stones, and this pile just took on this quality. And then the farmer came and said, “We should stick a flag on the top of that!” Now, what was the difference between that pile of stones and just a pile of stones? I guess that was my first really sculptural moment.
The whole thing about working on farms was so sculptural, the mood and building of haystacks, which are big minimalist sculptures, really. You have a system to building the haystacks, with the bales, but inevitably, with any system, it starts getting erratic and stuff starts getting out of shape. Those are very sculptural lessons that would have informed me. Or plowing a field, laying a hedge, building a wall. The British landscape has been sculpted and painted by farmers for centuries. The whole kind of rawness of farming, too. It’s a tough thing to experience. It really informed me.
Andy Goldsworthy
I’m not motivated by any intention to improve on what’s there. I don’t think I can do that. But I’m motivated by a need to understand what’s there through making. I think the act of making is an amazing tool for understanding what’s there and establishing a connection with a place. The difference between looking and making is huge. And when I’m within that, I wouldn’t take out a box of paints and paint stuff, because I’m much more into finding the colors that are there and understanding the colors that are there—to understand the leaf and work with the leaf on the tree that it fell from. The material is a window into this lineage of growth and change, and that’s what I’m really interested in. It’s not just going out there to make images. Otherwise I could just fabricate them on the computer.
Art—in the form of drawing, painting, making things—has always been everything to me. It’s the only thing I’ve ever done. But when I was working on a farm, I remember one day we were collecting stones off the field, and I made a pile of stones. My brother was with me, and he started handing me stones, and this pile just took on this quality. And then the farmer came and said, “We should stick a flag on the top of that!” Now, what was the difference between that pile of stones and just a pile of stones? I guess that was my first really sculptural moment.
The whole thing about working on farms was so sculptural, the mood and building of haystacks, which are big minimalist sculptures, really. You have a system to building the haystacks, with the bales, but inevitably, with any system, it starts getting erratic and stuff starts getting out of shape. Those are very sculptural lessons that would have informed me. Or plowing a field, laying a hedge, building a wall. The British landscape has been sculpted and painted by farmers for centuries. The whole kind of rawness of farming, too. It’s a tough thing to experience. It really informed me.
Andy Goldsworthy
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