Andy Goldsworthy is a British artist who was born in 1956. He works with nature in order to make amazing creative works of art within a genre known as "natural art." Some of the medium he has worked with includes bird feathers, pinecones, twigs, flowers, ice, dirt, leaves, and rocks. He transforms these all-natural materials into colorful, intricate and beautiful works of art that stay within their natural environment. Goldsworthy has been quoted, "The underlying tension of a lot of my art is to try and look through the surface appearance of things. Inevitably, one way of getting beneath the surface is to introduce a hole, a window into what lies below." His work takes common and natural elements, and transforms them into amazing and deep pieces of art that explore emotion, expression, and the rhythm of life. Andy Goldsworthy attended the Bradford College of Art from 1974-1975. He went on to live in Scotland, where he continued creating his work.

Photography plays a very important role in Goldsworthy's art. He has said that it is good to photograph his artwork in its natural state and then follow through by photographing it later on as it decays or ages. This displays the progressive nature of the work, as well as how nature can change the art. He realizes that decay is part of life. He once said, "I find some of my new works disturbing, just as I find nature as a whole disturbing. The landscape is often perceived as pastoral, pretty, beautiful – something to be enjoyed as a backdrop to your weekend before going back to the nitty-gritty of urban life. But anybody who works the land knows it's not like that. Nature can be harsh – difficult and brutal, as well as beautiful. You couldn't walk five minutes from here without coming across something that is dead or decaying." His intense work has been featured in many museums, including the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

The artwork Andy Goldsworthy creates integrates natural colors into it. An example would be his piece entitled Red Pool, in which he incorporated the red colored sandstone, and added it to the water. A lot of the work he creates is considered an "artwork of the mind." It is very much up to the person viewing it and how they perceive its correlation with nature. He did not just make small pieces of work that were photographed. His work entitled Storm King Wall took many years to develop and consists of stones gathered from the Storm King Art Center. It stretches for thousands of feet and stands as a tribute to both the art center itself and the beauty of nature in its own native state. Goldsworthy has published several books, made television appearances, and there is even a documentary about his life and work. There is no doubt that he has been influential to many other artists who have decided to use the beauty of the world around them and translate that into artistic expression.

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