Never let anyone define what you are capable of by using parameters that don’t apply to you. – Chuck Close
I’m plagued with indecision in my life. I can’t figure out what to order in a restaurant. – Chuck Close
In my art, I deconstruct and then I reconstruct, so visual perception is one of my primary interests. – Chuck Close
Of all the artists who emerged in the ’80s, I think perhaps Cindy Sherman is the most important. – 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
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’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
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
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
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
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
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
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 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
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
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
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
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
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
