A Long Journey

I think I was about 16 or 17 years when I first became aware of the work of Richard Long. I was at school taking my A Levels, English, History and Art. For me, at that time there was only art. The other two exams were simply there to help me get to University to study art. Long's work was a revelation. I knew very little about modern art. I had visited the Louvre, the Uffizi and a few other galleries but art was either figurative sculpture or painting. This man did something completely different. Most of all the work seemed accessible in a way that classical art was not. It did not seem strange in any way. It was a kind of elemental drawing and I loved drawing. The work presented all the forms that appealed to my young eyes: lines, spirals, circles. He used mud, snow, stones, rocks. All things that did not need to be paid for. The very idea that a walk was a piece of art was wonderful. I walked, I walked everywhere (we had no car). On Sundays I would escape home and walk with my friend Andy, these became our tribute to Long.
Looking back over thrity years his work still moves me. It generates a sense of longing for the isolated places, the wilderness, that he so often occupies. I have been increasingly pre-occupied by an anxiety that so much modern art requires the industry of dangerous chemicals, factory workers, factory budgets etc. to convince us whilst Long has been the most environmentally conscious artist of our generation, shunning complex methods of production in favour of a gentle footprint that disappears not long after his departure. There is a simple record that he was there.