Nature and Goldsworthy Essay

Submitted By georginasusanna
Words: 1159
Pages: 5
Open Document
This essay explores the work of the extrodinary and well known English land artist Andy Goldsworthy, whose work I greatly admire.

In this essay I will highlight his background and influences and discuss how land art helps us to understand and appreciate the complexities of nature through art.

Andy Goldsworthy is primarilly a photographer and a sculptor, influenced mainly by the natural environment and the way that he and society interacts with it. His inspiration is derived from found objects in the natural world (trees, leaves, icicles, stones) and his work aims to interact with the natural process or environment so as to become part of the natural world itself. His own special connection with the land is evident throughout and illustrates his own personal journey through life and nature.

Goldsworthy was born in 1956 in Cheshire, England, and was raised on the wild Yorkshire Moors.

Picture of Yorkshire Moor

He studied art at Bradford Art College 1974 and found the environment there to be limiting and sterile. He started creating his trademark land art outside - first on the beaches in Lancashire and then studied at Lancaster Art College 1975–1978.

Picture of his first Art on lancashire beach

Goldsworthy was born and bred on a farm on the Yorkshire Moors. The natural environment was his home and his life. His upbringing there has had a great impact on the work he creates.

From the age of 13 he observed the weather patterns, how the seasons transformed the earth and how subtle changes transformed the landscape as time passed from one minute to another and from one year to the next. These environmental changes, subtle and dramatic transformations, so key to understanding and working the land in farming, became Goldsworthy’s materials and as an artist change and the lapse of time became his paint pallet.

Much of his work is directly influenced by his early experiences of life on the farm, the cycle of life and death and the deconstruction of nature.

Picture of yorkshire moor at dawn - sun rise in the spring or similar

From and early age Goldworthy was at home with nature. He learned to be practical and hands on. As a farm labourer he learned to skins hares, fell trees, dig ditches, plant hedges, mend fences and build dry stone walls. His connection with nature was practical and not romantic.

Picture of a dry stone wall

The wide open spaces of the Yorkshire moors were his home and garden. The shovel, the saw, the hammer and the plough his daily tools in the pursuit of farming became his tools for sculpting the art he created from the natural world around him.

Picture of Goldsworthy as a young man

As a young artist and observer of nature Goldsworthy first began to photograph the landscape. As time progressed he started to interact with what he saw in a more phylosophical way - looking to nature to provide a wider understanding of the world around him and his state of consciousness. Always mindful of his childhood roots on the farm, simple farm objects such as hay bales, ploughed fields, dry stone walls were to impact on his work.

Goldsworthy believed that all forms are to be found in nature, and that there are many qualities within any material including of course life itself which is time sensitive. Any material lives, thrives, decays and dies in nature. This energy and force is captured in Goldsworthy’s work in the course of his explorations and interactions with nature.

“Movement, change, light growth and decay are the lifeblood of nature, the energies that I try to tap through my work. I need the shock of touch, the resistance of place, materials and weather, the earth as my source.

Picture of Relevant art work with description

.....By exploring them I hope to understand the whole. My work needs to include the loose and disordered within the nature of material as well as the tight and regular”.

He became aware of what raw nature is in a
Show More

Related Documents: Nature and Goldsworthy Essay

Andy Goldsworthy Essay

Artist Andy Goldsworthy is a British land and environmental artists born on the 26 of July 1956 in Cheshire, England. Andy grew up in Yorkshire in England. From the age of 13, Andy worked on a farm as a labourer, while attending Harrogate High School. He studied Fine Art at the Bradford Art College in 1974 to 1975 and then went to study at Preston Polytechnic from 1975 to 1978, graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts. He worked around the farm tasks which routine of making sculpture, a quote from…

Words 1457 - Pages 6

Andy Goldworthy Essay

Andy Goldsworthy Andy Goldsworthy is a British artist who spec¬ializes in environment based sculpture or instillation. He uses all natural materials such as stones, leaves, sticks, dirt, light, snow, water and any other naturally occurring material. His works are timeless, without knowing, it would be difficult to know whether his sculptures where modern or hundreds of years old. He uses no tools other than his hands. Growing up on a farm in Scotland he gained this value of the natural environment…

Words 552 - Pages 3

Essay about Outline: Photography and Andy Goldsworthy

he holds are very serious looking. The world shown in this photo is both a spectacle and an enjoyable image. Andy Goldsworthy Goldsworthy creates his own image by using things from nature. There is a lot of use of nature in the commercial and fashion industry. In this picture, however, Andy does not just use nature as a photograph but he proves that nature also has its own feeling and expression. This photo has its own story; it reminds me of a scene from a fairy tale story. The color…

Words 506 - Pages 3

Enzyme Activity II: The Breakdown Of Starch Due To Amyylase

it works the best, for example intestinal enzymes have an optimum pH of 7.5 (Temperature). The knowledge of how enzymes work is very important in the biological world, it allows for scientist to have a better understanding of chemical reactions in nature and in laboratories. Enzymes also help speed up the reactions in our body, without these natural catalyst reactions would take place too slowly and individuals would die.(Who am I). By doing this experiment scientist will have a better understanding…

Words 817 - Pages 4

belonging place and people Essay

Belonging requires a connection to people and places Belonging is a fundamental element of human nature that yearns for connections to be shared with people and places to gain a sense of fulfilment. . Sharing deep affiliations with people influences one’s values and perceptions, often providing sustenance and self-confidence for the individual. The memoir Maestro by Peter Goldsworthy and the Film Australia, directed by Baz Luhrmann 2010, explore the notion that the strong bonds with people can shape…

Words 1256 - Pages 6

Essay on WiFi a Thalidomide in the making wh

2013 Humanity on the BRINK – Research Report from Barrie Trower ‐ Frequencies that KILL . . . Barrie Trower September 2013 With Deference to all Scientists: this Research Report has been written for all students and non‐scientists to understand. 1 2013 Abstract As stated by University Researchers, Government Scientists and International Scientific Advisors; a minimum of 57.7% of schoolgirls exposed to low‐level microwave radiation…

Words 4476 - Pages 18

Essay on Criminal Law

V Inchoate & Party Offences A Attempts Incomplete offences 1 Offences (a) Specific attempt provisions (i) Attempting to pervert the course of justice 1. s143 (ii) Attempted murder 2. s283 (iii) Assaults 3. in s222 (b) General attempt provisions In the absence of a specific attempt provision, these general provisions make it an offence to attempt any offence in the criminal code. (i) Attempting an indictable offence 4. s552 1. Any person who attempts to commit an indictable offence…

Words 4697 - Pages 19