Andy Goldsworthy-again.

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.

Andy Goldsworthy is a British Environmentalist, Photographer and Sculptor. He was born on the 26th of July in 1956 in Cheshire and he is currently working and living in Scotland. Goldsworthy is originally from England and when he was younger he worked on a farm as a labourer, he believes that this is where his love for nature was primarily formed. From this he went on to study Fine Art at Bradford College of Art (1974-1975) and at Preston Polytechnic (1975-1978) where he received his Bachelor of Arts degree. Once he had finished college Goldsworthy spent time in Yorkshire, Lancashire and Cumbria and then he moved to Langholm, Galloway , Dumfriesshire and Scotland and then a year after he moved to Penpont. Goldsworthy has said that he didn’t have much control over the move north and that it was opportunities knocking with money alongside which led him there. In 1982 he settled in Penpont and begin to work  with the land around him, aswell as creating pieces in England hes also made pieces in more exotic places like the North pole.

       

  Andy Goldsworthy works within the limits of nature, however by doing this he creates limitless pieces. His materials include flowers, stones, bricks, mud, snow and many more. 

 "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.

 His pieces use natural materials and this creates boundaries, Goldsworthy makes a point of not manipulating the materials, he chooses to keep them in their found physical state and then organises them to create pieces of art work.

Goldsworthy uses his own bare hands or any found tools to create most of his pieces. On rare occasion for bigger and more permanent pieces he has to use machinery but he likes to keep this to a bare minimum. He feels that by using his hands to creates pieces it gives him a better chance to be intimite with nature and will enable him to understand nature fully. Goldsworthy also likes to produce photography relating to his pieces he has said :

"Each work grows, stays, decays – integral parts of a cycle which the photograph shows at its heights, marking the moment when the work is most alive.”

In relation to this it’s important for him to create pieceswhich will eventually decay but it’s also important for him to take images of these pieces as a personal memoir and a piece of art which can withstand nature longer then the original pieces.  Goldsworthy doesnt like to change natures original state and his work is designed to carry on its own lifecycle and evolve naturally which alternatively keeps creating different pieces of art by its self as time goes on.

"I take the opportunities each day offers: 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. Here is where I can learn."

Goldsworthy inspires me as he is an opportunist. Goldsworthy doesnt wait for someone to ask him to create piece, or give him direction he goes out everyday walking the earth him looking for his own opportunitys. I feel that this is something which we can learn from and as artists we should be grabing the same chances as he does. His work inspires me through his talent of making every day found objects into a piece of Art, he uses his talent to show natures beauty but also its decay and sheer brut. I like the honestly of Goldsworthy’s pieces that what you see is what you get and he stays true to this throughout his work. Goldsworthy shows that anything can be art if you just give it a chance.