Chuck Close

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

— Chuck Close

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

— Chuck Close

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

— Chuck Close

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

— Chuck Close

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

— Chuck Close

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

— Chuck Close

“I always thought that inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work.”

— Chuck Close

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

— Chuck Close

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

— 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…

— Chuck Close

My mother was a piano teacher, my father an inventor. He invented the reflective paint they still use on airstrips. They had…

— 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…

— Chuck Close

You can give the same recipe to ten cooks, and some make it come alive, and some make a flat souffle. A…

— 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

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

— 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

A face is a road map of someone's life. Without any need to amplify that or draw attention to it, there's a…

— 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…

— Chuck Close

Like any corporation, I have the benefit of the brainpower of everyone who is working for me. It all ends up being…

— 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…

— 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,…

— Chuck Close

When you come up in the art world, whatevers in the air, the issues of the moment, end up becoming part of…

— 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…

— 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…

— 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…

— 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…

— Chuck Close

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

— Chuck Close

“The worst possible thing in the world can happen to you, and you will overcome it. You will be happy again.”

— 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…

— Chuck Close

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

— Chuck Close

Any artist who goes to Las Vegas is an idiot as far as I am concerned. Whoever goes to Las Vegas can…

— Chuck Close

I think I was driven to paint portraits to commit images of friends and family to memory. I have face blindness, and…

— Chuck Close

Any innovation that is evident in my paintings is a direct result of something that happened in the course of making a…

— 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

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

— 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…

— 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

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 always thought that one of the reasons why a painter likes especially to have other painters look at his or her…

— Chuck Close

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

— Chuck Close