Quote

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.

Chuck Close

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Chuck Close
Age: 81 †
Born: 1940
Born: July 5
Died: 2021
Died: August 19
Drawer
Graphic Artist
Painter
Photographer
Monroe
Washington
Charles Thomas Close
Charles Close
Chuck Close (1940-2021)
Charles Close (1940-2021)
Make
Shows
Clouds
Amateurs
Around
Wait
Bolts
Part
Rest
Inaction
Best
Inspiration
Strike
Ideas
Brain
Lightning
Come
Waiting
Painter
Going
Show
Strikes
Inactivity
Work
Process
Awful
Bolt

More quotes by Chuck Close

Image
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
Image
There's something Zen-like about the way I work - it's like raking gravel in a Zen Buddhist garden.
Chuck Close
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Sculpture occupies real space like we do... you walk around it and relate to it almost as another person or another object.
Chuck Close
Image
I think the problem with the arts in America is how unimportant it seems to be in our educational system.
Chuck Close
Image
I have always attempted to create images that deliver the maximum amount of information about the subject.
Chuck Close
Image
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
Image
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
Image
There are things about signing on to a process over the long term that protect you from the buffeting winds of change.
Chuck Close
Image
I learned you could suffer a terrible tragedy and still be happy again.
Chuck Close
Image
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
Image
It's always a pleasure to talk about someone else's work.
Chuck Close
Image
I never said the camera was truth. It is, however, a more accurate and more objective way of seeing.
Chuck Close
Image
Never let anyone define what you are capable of by using parameters that don’t apply to you.
Chuck Close
Image
I don't work with inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs. I just get to work.
Chuck Close
Image
All the fingerprint paintings are done without a grid.
Chuck Close
Image
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
Image
I've always thought that problem-solving is highly overrated and that problem creation is far more interesting.
Chuck Close