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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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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)
Buddhist
Photographer
Garden
Photography
Work
Something
Raking
Way
Like
Gravel

More quotes by 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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Sculpture occupies real space like we do... you walk around it and relate to it almost as another person or another object.
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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.
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Those who are waiting for an epiphany to strike may wait forever. The artist simply goes to work, making art, both good and not so good.
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All the fingerprint paintings are done without a grid.
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I'm plagued with indecision in my life. I can't figure out what to order in a restaurant.
Chuck Close
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Ease is the enemy of the artist. When things get too easy, you're in trouble.
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Ive said its a little bit like a magician performing for a convention of magicians... all the magicians in the audience watching this illusion-Do they see the illusion, or do they see the device that made the illusion? Probably they see a little of both.
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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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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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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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
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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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Paintings can make you cry and it's just **colored dirt**.
Chuck Close
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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
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The camera is objective. When it records a face it can't make any hierarchical decisions about a nose being more important than a cheek. The camera is not aware of what it is looking at. It just gets it all down.
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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There are things about signing on to a process over the long term that protect you from the buffeting winds of change.
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