Transform - Fine Art

For this weeks private study task I have been asked to research and post 3 artists who use walking as part of their creative practice.

The first artist I came across was Jan Dibbets. He is a Dutch conceptual artist born on 9th May 1941.

His work does not show an obvious approach to the use of walking but I find his panoramic like images give a fantastic sense of movement across a landscape. This piece of work is called Panorama Dutch Mountain 12 x 15° Sea II A, and was made in1971.

The second artist I found was Richard Long. Long's work is similar to David Nash and Andy Goldsworthy who I wrote about in a previous post. 

Richard Long is an English sculptor, land artist, photographer and painter. 

His work stems from taking walks through rural and remote areas in Britain, the plains of Canada, Mongolia and Bolivia. When researching into his work, I found this piece to be one of my favourites. The simple lines of repetition show a natural yet thoughtful composition.

"Nature has always been a subject of art, from the first cave paintings to twentieth-century landscape photography. I wanted to use the landscape as an artist in new ways. First I started making work outside using natural materials like grass and water, and this led to the idea of making a sculpture by walking. This was a straight line in a grass field, which was also my own path, going 'nowhere'. In the subsequent early map works, recording very simple but precise walks on Exmoor and Dartmoor, my intention was to make a new art which was also a new way of walking: walking as art. Each walk followed my own unique, formal route, for an original reason, which was different from other categories of walking, like travelling. Each walk, though not by definition conceptual, realised a particular idea. Thus walking – as art – provided a simple way for me to explore relationships between time, distance, geography and measurement. These walks are recorded in my work in the most appropriate way for each different idea: a photograph, a map, or a text work. All these forms feed the imagination."
—Richard Long

The final artist I found was Hamish Fulton. He is a British artist and photographer, born on 21st July 1946. 

He is an artist that works solely on the idea of walking, solo or as a group. 

He has stated "If I do not walk, I cannot make a work of art" and has summed up this way of thinking in the simple statement of intent: "no walk, no work".