Taking a stroll with Richard Long is to find oneself trotting alongside a tall, elegant mile-eating machine. Long, who is 72, eschews huffing and puffing, and fancy gear. There’s an irrepressible ease in the way he strides over the grass, and a thirst for it, too. He leaned into each stride with relish, after we had spent an hour sitting indoors, talking. He’s a professional walker or, rather, he has made an artistic living from doing the thing that is essential to his life. Writers who find inspiration – or book deals – from walking are ten a penny. Walking artists, however, are rarer. Long is the best known and longest practising British exponent of land art, a form of conceptual art which uses natural materials directly in the landscape. As a student at St Martin’s in 1967, he had the clever idea of taking a train from Waterloo, dismounting...
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