2007

Made directly on the Gallery wall, Cairngorm Line is in the Ziggurat form which Long first drew while on a walk in Peru in 1974. As in all Long’s work, there is an interface between the man made (the marks, which Long makes with his hand, using diluted China clay) and nature, in the form of the splashes, which occur through the force of gravity, as he applies the China clay to the wall.

• © the artist

1967

Richard Long made this work by simply walking up and down on the same line, until he had worn the grass away. Instead of using traditional sculptural techniques, such as modelling in clay, carving in stone, or welding in metal (the dominant technique at St Martin’s College of Art, when Long was a student there in the mid-1960s), this was a new way of making sculpture. Through minimal intervention he expressed man’s relationship with the landscape. Such works also challenged the status of the art object as a physical thing, in that they are ephemeral: in this work, the grass would grow back after a few days and the only record is the photograph.

• © Richard Long

1972

Long’s art is about the landscape and man’s presence with it. In the early 1970s, Long’s practise involved walking, gathering items such as sticks and stones, and laying them down, as a kind of witness to his own presence in the landscape. The forms he made are mainly lines and circles – ancient, primitive symbols which are redolent of sites such as Stonehenge, and they have the same simplicity and grandeur as the landscape itself.

• © Courtesy the artist and Haunch of Venison, London

1980

On walks made during the 1970s, Long began laying rocks or twigs out into straight lines or circles. By the late 1970s he was reconstructing these works in interior settings, though the walk remained the basis for collecting the natural material. He remarks: ‘A walk is a line of footsteps, a sculpture is a line of stones. They’re interchangeable and complementary. Through the rhythms of walking, sleeping, walking, sleeping, I can understand better the rhythms of nature.’ The slate for this work came from Delabole in Cornwall: it was Long’s first work in slate.

• © Courtesy the artist and Haunch of Venison, London

2002

This work was made specifically for the Dean Gallery, which is part of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art complex. It was made immediately after a walk Long made from Oban, on the west coast of Scotland, to Stonehaven on the east coast. It is made of Macduff slate, and is sited in a quiet area of the Gallery grounds, close to an adjacent cemetery.  The circular form is perhaps the most powerful symbol of Man’s interaction with nature: in prehistory, men arranged rocks into circles as a means of communing with the earth, the sun, the moon and their gods. The circle suggests a concentrated filed of force or focus of energy.

• © Courtesy the artist and Haunch of Venison, London

2007

Long grew up in Bristol, close to the River Avon, one of the biggest tidal rivers in the world. As a child he loved to play with River Avon mud and this fascination with mud has remained with him ever since. It is an elemental material (like the stones and sticks which recur in his work) which is made by the gravitational pull of the moon on water over stones, over a period of thousands of years. Long normally uses River Avon mud in his work, but here he used Firth of Forth mud, collected near Edinburgh.

• © the artist

2005

Long has been using mud in his work since the late 1960s. Mud is stone, weathered by the action of water over a long period of time: it therefore incorporates a time element, in the same way as Long’s sculptures made on walks incorporate a time element. He always uses mud from the River Avon: he was born in Bristol and still lives in the area, so this mud has strong personal associations. These works are made simply by dipping card into diluted mud. The rivulets which emerge from this process are similar yet unique: they are like fingerprints, yet have a cosmic variety. They have an ambiguity of scale which suggests something viewed through a microscope or a planet viewed through a telescope.

• © Courtesy the artist and Haunch of Venison, London

2006

This three-part work is from a recent series made from china clay. They are made by splashing a wall with the diluted clay, and allowing it to drip and splash onto the sheets below. The works emerge as landscape paintings of a kind, redolent of Chinese calligraphy.

• © Courtesy the artist and Haunch of Venison, London

2005

Just as Long’s stone lines made in the landscape suggest the presence of Man, so too do Long’s works on paper, which feature his hand and finger prints. Everyone’s hand and finger prints are similar yet unique. These works therefore mediate on the individual and the cosmic. Just as a handprint or fingerprint may be seen as the mark of an individual, so they are also the mark of Man in general.

• © Courtesy the artist and Haunch of Venison, London

2007

Richard Long has created a major stone piece especially for the exhibition. It is sited behind the Gallery of Modern Art, in an area adjoining the Gallery’s café grounds. Consisting of eight tons of Delabole slate from Cornwall, it is shaped in the form of a cross – a relatively new motif in Long’s work, following from the circles and lines adopted in the 1960s.

• © The artist

1992

This work combines three traits common across Richard Long’s work. Firstly there is the use of River Avon mud as an artistic material. Secondly there is the use of his fingers in applying this mud to the paper. Thirdly, the mud prints form the shape of that primitive symbol, the circle. These three traits combine to create a work that explores Long’s favourite theme: man’s ancient and ongoing relationship with the Earth.

• © Courtesy the artist and Haunch of Venison, London

2007

Long’s art often refers to the marking of time, in the form of walks which take a specific number of days, or actions which Long makes at regular intervals (picking up or laying down stones). This work was made on 21 June, Midsummer’s Day and the longest day of the year. The circular form echoes the form of the earth, sun and moon. Measuring about 8 feet in diameter, and made directly on the Gallery wall, it includes more than 200 handprints, made in mud from the Firth of Forth.

• © the artist