Back to Nature

Andy Goldsworthy’s awesome and thought-provoking art creations nurture our respect for the environment, while also offering viewers extremely beautiful examples of imaginative Land Art sculptures celebrating Nature.

The nostalgia of winter often invites us to contemplate about Nature, its cycles and the mutual interaction between humans and what surrounds us. Present day environmental movements and concerns have motivated many artists to direct their creativity to what has already been acknowledged as Land Art, offering viewers unexpected and stunning art works often found in surprising sceneries, therefore emphasizing our awareness to the mentioned concerns, while also opening new perspectives on what can be regarded as Art.

Andy Goldsworthy, a British born and Scotland-based artist, has earned praise and respect as a photographer and environmental sculptor who works not only with Nature, but also in Nature. His media are natural and found objects, so as to create both ephemeral and perennial sculptures which draw their character from the environment into which they are set. Among his deeply organic media, we can find brightly coloured flowers, icicles, leaves, mud, pinecones, snow, stones, twigs or thorns.
Goldsworthy tools for the ephemeral art works he creates can be merely his bare hands, his teeth and found tools with which he produces his art objects. Since they easily collapse under the ravages of weather, they are given a more lasting lifetime by their creator, who captures them in successive photographs in their process of withering away to finally melt into Nature again. “Earth to earth, ashes to ashes…”

For the most permanent sculptures, however, Andy Goldsworthy resorts to the use of machine tools to build surprising installations in both cities and countryside throughout the world. These art works are not only aesthetically remarkable, but they also increase viewers’ awareness to common natural features by showing them under a new perspective.

Goldsworthy mesmerizing, site-specific art works can depict frost shadows, sculptures of rocks or leaves arranged in a way such as to change and dissolve themselves with the tides. It is almost as if Nature, in fact, works side by side with Goldsworthy, whose works – in turn – are indeed a hymn to the natural world he so much loves and respects. “Nature for me isn’t the bit that stops in the national parks. It’s in a city, in a gallery, in a building. It’s everywhere we are, he says.

The impact Goldsworthy’s art woks have on viewers can be actually strong and even pedagogic for, once they are spotted amongst a wood, they are perceived as intriguing, thought-provoking and unexpected, therefore conveying a positive and appreciative feeling about the world surrounding us and enhancing a respectful attitude towards Nature.