Black Line

In Richard Long's oeuvre, every mineral has pre-determined qualities that the artist precisely handles and orchestrates, in much the same way that a painter creates his composition by mixing pure colours from the tube. About his use of similarly pre-existing line shapes, the artist has stated:
"The very fact that they are images that don't belong to me and, in fact, are shared by everyone because they have existed throughout history, actually makes them more powerful than if I was inventing my own idiosyncratic, particular Richard Long-type images." (In: 'Richard Long. Walking in Circles', London 1991, p. 250.)