Richard Long quotes

«My work has become a simple metaphor of life. A figure walking down his road, making his mark. It is an affirmation of my human scale and senses.»

«There was an important teacher at that time called Peter Atkins who was a sort of intellectual guru for my generation of students. […] Yes, by these were times just on the end of that tradition of the Clement Greenberg modernist aesthetic, and we were the first year of students to have our own agenda, so we knew what we wanted to do and it was very different from the Greenberg-Caro style.»

«Yes, it is always like a balance – a harmony of complementary ideas. You could say that my work is also a balance between the patterns of nature and the formalism of human, abstract ideas like lines and circles. It is where my human characteristics meet the natural forces and patterns of the world, and that is really the kind of subject of my work.»

«No, it is never a performance. It is usually a very private, quiet activity. I am happy to make it in solitude. I think part of the energy in my work is that I have the opportunity to make art in amazing, beautiful landscapes which are very strong and powerful. Somehow part of the power and the energy comes from being along in that place. The simplicity and feeling of being alone is actually part of the work.»

«My photographs are facts which bring the / right accessibility to remote, lonely / or otherwise unrecognisable works. Some sculptures / are seen by few people, but can be known about many.»

«I like the idea that art can be made anywhere, perhaps seen by few people, or not recognised as art when they do.»

«I am not really a great photographer, sometimes my photographs almost by chance are beautiful, whereas Hamish [Fulton, M.-L. G.] is a natural photographer. He has a great feeling for landscape images.»

«Es ist wirklich eine sichtbare Linie, weil das Gras durch meine Fußstapfen niedergetrampelt ist, und das niedergedrückte Gras reflektiert das Sonnenlicht. So hinterläßt in Wirklichkeit die Sonne Spuren. Ich glaube, diese Arbeit war eine wichtige Arbeit, denn sie hat nur die Vorstellung davon offenbart, daß das Sichtbarwerden davon abhängt, wie oft man (etwas) macht.»