Chuck Close Quotes

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Chuck Close

Profession : Artist

Birth : July 5, 1940

It doesn't upset artists to find out that artists used lenses or mirrors or other aids, but it certainly does upset the art historians.

Chuck Close

I always thought that one of the reasons why a painter likes especially to have other painters look at his or her work is the shared experience of having pushed paint around.

Chuck Close

I think I was driven to paint portraits to commit images of friends and family to memory. I have face blindness, and once a face is flattened out, I can remember it better.

Chuck Close

I'm very interested in how we read things, especially the link between seeing two-dimensional and three-dimensional images, because of how I read.

Chuck Close

In the 7th grade, I made a 20-foot long mural of the Lewis and Clark Trail while we were studying that in history because I knew I wasn't going to be able to spit back the names and the dates and all that stuff on a test.

Chuck Close

I wanted to translate from one flat surface to another. In fact, my learning disabilities controlled a lot of things. I don't recognize faces, so I'm sure it's what drove me to portraits in the first place.

Chuck Close

I'm not by nature a terribly intuitive person; I need to build a situation in which I will behave more intuitively, and that has really changed the life of my work - I found a way to trick myself into being intuitive.

Chuck Close

I knew from the age of five what I wanted to do. The one thing I could do was draw. I couldn't draw that much better than some of the other kids, but I cared more and I wanted it badly.

Chuck Close

I only have so much time and energy and money, and I'm going to put it into my work.

Chuck Close

Neurologically, I'm a quadriplegic, so virtually everything about my work has been driven by my learning disabilities, which are quite severe, and my lack of facial recognition, which I'm sure is what drove me to paint portraits in the first place.

Chuck Close

All the fingerprint paintings are done without a grid.

Chuck Close

I have a great deal of difficulty recognizing faces, especially if I haven't - if I've just met somebody, it's hopeless.

Chuck Close

Painting is a lie. It's the most magic of all media, the most transcendent. It makes space where there is no space.

Chuck Close

Most people are good at too many things. And when you say someone is focused, more often than not what you actually mean is they're very narrow.

Chuck Close

If the bottom dropped out of the market and the artist was not going to sell anything, he or she will keep working, and the dealer will keep trying to find some way to convince somebody to buy this stuff.

Chuck Close

Ease is the enemy of the artist. When things get too easy, you're in trouble.

Chuck Close

What difference does it make whether you're looking at a photograph or looking at a still life in front of you? You still have to look.

Chuck Close

Part of the joy of looking at art is getting in sync in some ways with the decision-making process that the artist used and the record that's embedded in the work.

Chuck Close

Inspiration is highly overrated. If you sit around and wait for the clouds to part, it's not liable to ever happen. More often than not, work is salvation.

Chuck Close

I don't want the viewer to be able to peel away the layers of my painting like the layers of an onion and find that all the blues are on the same level.

Chuck Close