Andy Goldsworthy

Andy Goldsworthy – Nature as inspiration and canvas

Andy Goldsworthy was born in Cheshire in England on 26 July 1956. During his childhood in the rural county of Yorkshire, he was regularly confronted with the beauty of nature from an early age, and was totally fascinated by it. His parental home was also characterised by science rather than art, with his father holding a position as professor for applied maths at the University of Leeds. Conversely, Andy Goldsworthy consciously chose to follow art, and enrolled at the College of Art in Bradford in 1974, moving to Preston Polytechnic in 1975. However, the coastal landscape of the Irish Sea fascinated him far more than any academic teaching and so he neglected university in favour of his first experiments with natural materials. From the start, he was content with what nature offered him there and then. He arranged small stones, pieces of wood and leaves into artful sculptures, which would be washed away by the next tide. 

Art remains transient out of respect for nature

From the beginning, Andy Goldsworthy accepted transience as a part of his artistic work. When he works with materials from nature, carving patterns into sand or hills, building fragile sculptures out of thorns, grass and twigs, it is clear to him that nature will shortly wash away his work. However, it was never his intention to leave traces, to permanently change the nature he so admires. His work was an approach towards the wonder around him, an interpretation and mediation of what had fascinated him as a child on his rambles. Andy Goldsworthy himself calls this the mysticism of a place that he wishes to artistically render tangible. He documents his works with a Hasselblad camera, and the resulting pictures are often the only evidence left for a broad audience to view. Despite this, Andy Goldsworthy reached a certain prominence with these memorabilia, which increasingly enabled him to also work on larger projects. 

A silent star with many profound images

Andy Goldsworthy’s rise to fame was rather quiet, making him a permanent fixture for those interested and initiated, rather than a dazzling superstar of the art scene. One such action was the transport of thirteen large snowballs to London and the photographic documentation of the reactions of the surprised passers-by who were suddenly confronted with unexpected snowfall on the day of the summer solstice. Andy Goldsworthy’s photo books strikingly illustrate the genesis and the decay of beauty. He also created celebrated art films such as Rivers and Tides and Leaning into Wind with the German film maker Thomas Riedelsheimer – the impressive images, accompanied by music by Fred Frith, received enthusiastic applause from the art critics. Andy Goldsworthy has received awards and honours for his nature-art, from the North West Award in 1979 to his induction into the Order of the British Empire in 2000. He had four children with his first wife Judith Gregson and lives now with his second wife, the art historian Tina Fiske, in Scotland.