Richard Long

"I like the simplicity of walking and the simplicity of stones.I like common materials, whatever is to hand, but especially stones. I like the idea that stones are what the world is made of."

- Richard Long, 1980

Richard Long is an English sculptor, photographer and painter whose work is often associated with conceptual and land art. He has traveled extensively and produces work at the sites he visits or alternatively he takes materials rocks, sticks or bark from these places to create works using simple forms of spirals, circles or rectangles.

Long studied at West of England College of Art in Bristol, before going to St Martin’s School of Art in London. His art projects were based on his long walks that he made in England and then internationally after 1969. Long creates smaller interventions in the landscape, moving rocks to form a pattern or walking repeatedly over a field to wear down a trail. He would also photograph these works to record these subtle changes. Some of these changes, such as pouring of water over rock surfaces would be of very short duration before the water would evaporate. This was part of his ethic of not damaging the environment he was exploring.