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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

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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)
Point
Image
Fact
Photography
Facts
Reach
Mind
Gets
Always
Leave
Never
Create
Quite
Abstract
Almost
Photographer

More quotes by Chuck Close

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All the best ideas come out of the process they come out of the work itself.
Chuck Close
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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I've always thought that problem-solving is highly overrated and that problem creation is far more interesting.
Chuck Close
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I think the problem with the arts in America is how unimportant it seems to be in our educational system.
Chuck Close
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It's always a pleasure to talk about someone else's work.
Chuck Close
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There's something Zen-like about the way I work - it's like raking gravel in a Zen Buddhist garden.
Chuck Close
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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
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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
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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
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Never let anyone define what you are capable of by using parameters that don’t apply to you.
Chuck Close
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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
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I learned you could suffer a terrible tragedy and still be happy again.
Chuck Close
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Inspiration is for amateurs - the rest of us just show up and get to work. And the belief that things will grow out of the activity itself and that you will - through work - bump into other possibilities and kick open other doors that you would never have dreamt of if you were just sitting around looking for a great art idea.
Chuck Close
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I don't work with inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs. I just get to work.
Chuck Close
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Sculpture occupies real space like we do... you walk around it and relate to it almost as another person or another object.
Chuck Close
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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