Chuck Close Quotes & Sayings

I build a painting by putting little marks together-some look like hot dogs, some like doughnuts. — Chuck Close

The advice I like to give young artists, or really anybody who'll listen to me, is not to wait around for inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you. If you're sitting around trying to dream up a great art idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens. But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that's almost never the case. — Chuck Close

After a few days in hospital, I was thinking, Oh, gee - I raised in a church, Protestant upbringing which I'd rejected as an adult - I'm lying in bed thinking, Hmmm, maybe I ought to pray. They always say there are no atheists in a foxhole ... and I thought, Here I am in a pretty good-sized foxhole ... and I thought Naahhh. I wouldn't respect any God who would listen to me after I'd rejected him so vociferously. — Chuck Close

Painting is the frozen evidence of a performance. — Chuck Close

I think most paintings are a record of the decisions that the artist made. I just perhaps make them a little clearer than some people have. — Chuck Close

I'm very learning-disabled, and I think it drove me to what I'm doing. — 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

Get yourself in trouble. If you get yourself in trouble, you don't have the answers. And if you don't have the answers, your solution will more likely be personal because no one else's solutions will seem appropriate. You'll have to come up with your own. — Chuck Close

I am going for a level of perfection that is only mine ... Most of the pleasure is in getting the last little piece perfect. — 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

Once I started working with the Polaroid, I would take a shot and if that shot was good, then I'd move the model and change the lighting or whatever ... slowly sneaking up on what I wanted rather than having to predetermine what it was. — Chuck Close

You don't have to have a great art idea - just get to work and something will happen. So that's pretty much my modus operandi and pretty much my principal position, such as it is. — Chuck Close

Art saved my life in two ways. It made me feel special, because I could do things my friends couldn't, but it also gave me a way to demonstrate to my teacher that, despite the fact that I couldn't write a paper or do math, I was paying attention. — Chuck Close

I absolutely hate technology, and I'm computer illiterate, and I never use any labor-saving devices although I'm not convinced that a computer is a labor-saving device. — Chuck Close

I always thought problem solving was greatly overrated - and that the most important thing was problem creation. — Chuck Close

If it looks like art, chances are it's somebody else's art. — Chuck Close

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

All the fingerprint paintings are done without a grid. — Chuck Close

Painting is the most magical of mediums. The transcendence is truly amazing to me every time I go to a museum and I see how somebody figured another way to rub colored dirt on a flat surface and make space where there is no space or make you think of a life experience. — Chuck Close

I love making art ... It's largely how I see myself. I'm an artist; therefore I have to make art. — Chuck Close

I have always attempted to create images that deliver the maximum amount of information about the subject. — Chuck Close

No one was more surprised than me when my paintings started selling, except maybe my dealer. — 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

Far more interesting than problem solving is problem creation. — 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

Amateurs look for inspiration; the rest of us just get up and go to work. — Chuck Close

It always amazes me that just when I think there's nothing left to do in photography and that all permutations and possibilities have been exhausted, someone comes along and puts the medium to new use, and makes it his or her own, yanks it out of this kind of amateur status, and makes it as profound and as moving and as formally interesting as any other medium. — Chuck Close

I love sculpture, and minimal sculpture is really my favorite stuff, but I wasn't very good at it, and I don't think in a three-dimensional way. — Chuck Close

Like any corporation, I have the benefit of the brainpower of everyone who is working for me. It all ends up being my work, the corporate me, but everyone extends ideas and comes up with suggestions. — Chuck Close

Those who are waiting for an epiphany to strike may wait forever. The artist simply goes to work, making art, both good and not so good. — Chuck Close

Ive said its a little bit like a magician performing for a convention of magicians ... all the magicians in the audience watching this illusion-Do they see the illusion, or do they see the device that made the illusion? Probably they see a little of both. — Chuck Close

There's something Zen-like about the way I work - it's like raking gravel in a Zen Buddhist garden. — Chuck Close

All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you.If you're sitting around trying to dream up a great idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens.But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction. — Chuck Close

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

See, I think our whole society is much too problem-solving oriented. It is far more interesting to participate in 'problem creation' ... You know, ask yourself an interesting enough question and your attempt to find a tailor-made solution to that question will push you to a place where, pretty soon, you'll find yourself all by your lonesome - which I think is a more interesting place to be. — 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

Inspiration is for amateurs. professionals work everyday. Personally the best inspiration is a deadline. — Chuck Close

It's always a pleasure to talk about someone else's work. — Chuck Close

The reason I don't like realist, photorealist, neorealist, or whatever, is that I am as interested in the artificial as I am in the real. — 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

Paintings can make you cry and it's just **colored dirt**. — Chuck Close

Women in general interest me. I like how women are more liable to talk about real things, personal things. — Chuck Close

Never let anyone define what you are capable of by using parameters that don't apply to you. — Chuck Close

In my art, I deconstruct and then I reconstruct, so visual perception is one of my primary interests. — Chuck Close

Any artist who goes to Las Vegas is an idiot as far as I am concerned. Whoever goes to Las Vegas can stay in Las Vegas. — Chuck Close

I don't believe in inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs. Some of the time you know you're cooking, and the rest of the time, you just do it. — Chuck Close

At the same time that I'm finding the color world I want, I'm also trying to make the imagery, you know, by the nature of the strokes themselves. — Chuck Close

Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightening to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. — Chuck Close

I discovered about 150 dots is the minimum number of dots to make a specific recognizable person. You can make something that looks like a head, with fewer dots, but you won't be able to give much information about who it is. — Chuck Close

You don't have to reinvent the wheel every day. Today you will do what you did yesterday, and tomorrow you will do what you did today. Eventually you will get somewhere. — Chuck Close

If you're overwhelmed by the size of a problem, break it down into smaller pieces. — Chuck Close

My mother was a piano teacher, my father an inventor. He invented the reflective paint they still use on airstrips. They had faith in my ambition, and I think that made all the difference. — Chuck Close

Photography is the easiest medium with which to be merely competent. Almost anybody can be competent. It's the hardest medium in which to have some sort of personal vision and to have a signature style. — Chuck Close

It's like a magic well. You think you know everything about [a] photograph, you think you've gotten everything out of it, and all of a sudden I see things in it I'd never seen before. — Chuck Close

Of all the artists who emerged in the '80s, I think perhaps Cindy Sherman is the most important. — Chuck Close

I think the problem with the arts in America is how unimportant it seems to be in our educational system. — Chuck Close

I learned you could suffer a terrible tragedy and still be happy again. — Chuck Close

I've always thought that problem-solving is highly overrated and that problem creation is far more interesting. — Chuck Close

I only use three primaries, so the nice thing is I can't have favorite colors. — Chuck Close

You know, the way art history is taught, often there's nothing that tells you why the painting is great. The description of a lousy painting and the description of a great painting will very much sound the same. — 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

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

In life you can be dealt a winning hand of cards and you can find a way to lose, and you can be dealt a losing hand and find a way to win. True in art and true in life: you pretty much make your own destiny. If you are by nature an optimistic person, which I am, that puts you in a better position to be lucky in life. — Chuck Close

From my point of view, photography never got any better than it was in 1840. — Chuck Close

I don't care about the Guggenheim. The Guggenheim isn't involved in anything that I am interested in. I don't care about motorcycles and Armani suits. — Chuck Close

Having a routine, knowing what to do, gives me a sense of freedom and keeps me from going crazy. It's calming. — Chuck Close

I think women realise that I love women, and very often women seem to love me. — Chuck Close

I don't work with inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs. I just get to work. — Chuck Close

I have no intention of flattering people. I like wrinkles and crow's feet and flaws, and somebody should know, if I'm going to photograph them, that's going to show up, you know? — 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

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

Sculpture occupies real space like we do ... you walk around it and relate to it almost as another person or another object. — 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 never said the camera was truth. It is, however, a more accurate and more objective way of seeing. — Chuck Close

There are things about signing on to a process over the long term that protect you from the buffeting winds of change. — Chuck Close

I did some pastels and I did other pieces in which there was just basically one color per square, and then they would get bigger and I could get 2 or 3 colors into the square, and ultimately I just started making oil paintings. — Chuck Close

I can't always reach the image in my mind ... almost never, in fact ... so that the abstract image I create is not quite there, but it gets to the point where I can leave it. — Chuck Close

A photograph doesn't gain weight or lose weight, or change from being happy to being sad. It's frozen. You can use it, then recycle it. — Chuck Close

I'm plagued with indecision in my life. I can't figure out what to order in a restaurant. — Chuck Close

Every child should have a chance to feel special. — Chuck Close

Any innovation that is evident in my paintings is a direct result of something that happened in the course of making a print. — Chuck Close

There are so many artists that are dyslexic or learning disabled, it's just phenomenal. There's also an unbelievably high proportion of artists who are left-handed, and a high correlation between left-handedness and learning disabilities. — Chuck Close

The thing that interests me about photography, and why it's different from all other media, is that it's the only medium in which there is even the possibility of an accidental masterpiece. — Chuck Close

You can give the same recipe to ten cooks, and some make it come alive, and some make a flat souffle. A system doesn't guarantee anything. — Chuck Close

A face is a road map of someone's life. Without any need to amplify that or draw attention to it, there's a great deal that's communicated about who this person is and what their life experiences have been. — 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

I'm poor white trash from the state of Washington. — Chuck Close

When you come up in the art world, whatevers in the air, the issues of the moment, end up becoming part of the working method or modus operandi of how you think about doing a painting. And I came up at a time when-actually painting was dead when I came up. Sculpture sort of ruled. — 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

Losing my father at a tender age was extremely important in being able to accept what happened to me later when I became a quadriplegic. — Chuck Close

While photography is the easiest medium in which to be competent, it is the hardest in which to develop an idiosyncratic personal vision. — 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

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

Every idea occurs while you are working. If you are sitting around waiting for inspiration, you could sit there forever. — 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

The camera is objective. When it records a face it can't make any hierarchical decisions about a nose being more important than a cheek. The camera is not aware of what it is looking at. It just gets it all down. — Chuck Close

Sometimes I really want to paint somebody and I don't get a photograph that I want to work from. — Chuck Close

The first thing I do is take Polaroids of the sitter - 10 or 12 color Polaroids and eight or 10 black-and whites. — Chuck Close