Richard Long (born 1945 in Bristol, England) studied at the West of England College of Art before enrolling at St Martin's School of Art in London in 1966, where his contemporaries included Gilbert & George, Barry Flanagan, and Hamish Fulton — part of a generation of British artists collectively redefining what sculpture could be. Where Gilbert & George would soon declare themselves "living sculptures," Long chose the opposite direction: using the landscape itself, and his own physical passage through it, as his material.

A Line Made by Walking (1967) announced the method with startling simplicity. Commuting the roughly 120 miles between Bristol and London, the 22-year-old student stopped in a field in Wiltshire, walked a straight path back and forth until the grass flattened enough to catch the light, and photographed the result. The gesture proposed something genuinely new: that art needn't leave a permanent object behind at all, only a record of an action performed with total sincerity. His first solo exhibition followed in 1968 at Konrad Fischer's gallery in Düsseldorf, where he showed Sculpture — 1,318 sticks gathered during a single walk through the English countryside, arranged directly on the gallery floor.

Because his outdoor interventions are inherently temporary — a line trodden into grass, stones arranged on a hillside, mud applied directly to a wall — photographs, maps, and text works are not secondary documentation for Long; they are frequently the only form in which the work survives at all. His technique with river mud, developed from the 1980s onward, involves hand-pressing or throwing wet mud sourced from specific waterways directly onto paper or a wall, working quickly before it dries, cracks, and shifts — the material's own instability becoming part of the finished work. "I like the idea that art can be made anywhere," he has said, a principle that has taken him walking through the Sahara, the Andes, and the Himalayas over a career spanning more than five decades.

Institutional recognition arrived early and has never really stopped. Long represented Great Britain at the Venice Biennale in both 1976 and 1980, won the Turner Prize in 1989, and received the Praemium Imperiale in 2009. In 2018, he was appointed Knight Bachelor. As recently as 2025, he created Mud Sun, a five-metre River Avon mud commission installed at the top of the National Gallery's newly reopened Sainsbury Wing staircase in London — proof that, nearly six decades after that first line in a Wiltshire field, he remains as active as ever.

A Line Made by Walking (1967), his foundational work, remains the clearest possible statement of his method — a straight path trodden into grass, photographed and titled, proposing that the simple record of a physical action could stand as sculpture.

Sculpture (1968), his debut solo exhibition piece at Konrad Fischer's Düsseldorf gallery, arranged 1,318 sticks gathered on a single walk directly onto the gallery floor — proof that materials collected without alteration could carry full sculptural weight.

Mud Sun (2025), a five-metre commission for London's National Gallery, applies tidal mud from the River Avon directly to the wall at the top of the Sainsbury Wing's grand staircase — six decades of walking-based practice condensed into a single, monumental gesture inside one of the world's most visited museums.

Richard Long's editions extend the same walking-based practice that defines his outdoor interventions, translated into printed and hand-applied form. River Avon Mud Drawings, a set of three grano-lithographs, incorporates actual mud sourced from the River Avon near his home in Bristol — abstract, gestural marks that carry the tactile, unrepeatable quality of the material directly onto paper. Other editions document specific walks and expeditions, including artworks drawn from his journeys through the Sahara, presented as maps, texts, and photographic records of routes travelled rather than objects made.

Because his outdoor works are inherently temporary and rarely enter private hands at all, prints and editions represent one of the only ways collectors can own a direct trace of Long's practice — carrying real material from the landscapes he has walked, not merely an image of it.

For collectors, Long's editions offer genuine access to nearly six decades of walking as a serious artistic method. Works are held in the permanent collections of MoMA, Tate, and the Centre Pompidou.