Chuck Close
Chuck Close
Charles Thomas "Chuck" Closeis an American painter/artist and photographer who achieved fame as a photorealist, through his massive-scale portraits. Close often paints abstract portraits, that are shown in the world's finest galleries. Although a catastrophic spinal artery collapse in 1988 left him severely paralyzed, he has continued to paint and produce work that remains sought after by museums and collectors. Close lives and works in Bridgehampton, New York and Long Beach, NY and New York City's East Village. His first...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPhotographer
Date of Birth5 July 1940
CityMonroe, WA
CountryUnited States of America
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.
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.
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.
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.
I tried to, with a series of self-imposed limitations, back myself into my own personal corner where nobody else's answers would fit. I've always thought that problem-solving is highly overrated and that problem creation is far more interesting.
Painting is the frozen evidence of a performance.
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.
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.
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.
I'm very learning-disabled, and I think it drove me to what I'm doing.
It's always a pleasure to talk about someone else's work.
I build a painting by putting little marks together-some look like hot dogs, some like doughnuts.
Sometimes I really want to paint somebody and I don't get a photograph that I want to work from.
Every idea occurs while you are working. If you are sitting around waiting for inspiration, you could sit there forever.