Richard Long

Parnassos 2018

Avon Mud

Long has made many mud paintings in locations all over the world, predominantly major art museums and galleries. Usually they are on the wall; occasionally they are made on the floor, but always they present the hand of the artist through dramatic gestures expressing movement and accident. Varying the source of the mud and the form of the area in which it is worked generates a range of titles. He has made spirals, circles and lines of muddy hand and foot prints on floors and walls. Other mud works are created by pouring a thin stream of mud across the floor in a carefully defined, jagged serpent line.

Long’s primary source of mud is the River Avon, near his birthplace and home in Bristol, but he also like to use mud from other sources. ‘The mud works are another aspect of the physicality of my work, like the walking. I always have a precise idea of the overall form of the work, which is balanced by the spontaneity of the execution. The speed of the hand gestures is important because that’s what makes the splashes, which shows the wateriness in the mud, and water is the main subject and content of these works, they show its nature.