“We always want to hold on to things as they are, but that’s not the nature of life or things, is it?”

Goldsworthy regards all his creations as transient, or ephemeral. “What’s important to me is the experience of creating. I leave all my work outside and often return to watch it decay,” says Goldsworthy. In his opinion, nature is in a state of change – and working with change, instead of against it, is critical to the success of his land art.

Commissions have taken him to the North Pole; rural landscapes of Cumbria, England, and Digne, France; the Australian Outback; and the US. But most of his creations are not permanent.

Risk and experimentation are vital as well. Improvising from what he finds, Goldsworthy constructs his pieces solely from natural materials. “I take nothing out with me in the way of tools, glue or rope, I prefer to explore the natural bonds and tensions that exist within the earth. The season and weather conditions determine to a large extent what I create. I make one or two sculptures every day I go out. From a month’s work, two or three pieces are successful.”

The son of a professor of applied mathematics, Goldsworthy was working as a farm laborer by the age of 13, so he did not take a direct path to studying large-scale fine art. Today, his diverse experience enriches his art. “When I began working outside, I had to establish instincts and feelings for nature: some I had never had, while others I had not used since childhood,” he remembers. Yet, his structures have a mathematical rhythm, and he finds constructing each work piece by piece is similar to repetitive farm tasks. As he puts it, “A lot of my work is like picking potatoes.”

Goldsworthy values change in himself as well. “One of the beauties of art is that it reflects an artist's entire life. What I’ve learned over the past 30 years is really beginning to influence what I make. I hope that process continues to the day I die.”

Published by PROJECT M in September 2009