Quote

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

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)
Things
Sudden
Never
Gotten
Think
Photograph
Thinking
Magic
Like
Seen
Wells
Everything
Well

More quotes by Chuck Close

Image
I love sculpture, and minimal sculpture is really my favorite stuff, but I wasn't very good at it, and I don't think in a three-dimensional way.
Chuck Close
Image
I've always thought that problem-solving is highly overrated and that problem creation is far more interesting.
Chuck Close
Image
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
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
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
Image
You know, the way art history is taught, often there's nothing that tells you why the painting is great. The description of a lousy painting and the description of a great painting will very much sound the same.
Chuck Close
Image
A face is a road map of someone's life. Without any need to amplify that or draw attention to it, there's a great deal that's communicated about who this person is and what their life experiences have been.
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
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
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
Image
What difference does it make whether you're looking at a photograph or looking at a still life in front of you? You still have to look.
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 absolutely hate technology, and I'm computer illiterate, and I never use any labor-saving devices although I'm not convinced that a computer is a labor-saving device.
Chuck Close
Image
I don't work with inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs. I just get to work.
Chuck Close
Image
Painting is a lie. It's the most magic of all media, the most transcendent. It makes space where there is no space.
Chuck Close
Image
All the fingerprint paintings are done without a grid.
Chuck Close
Image
Paintings can make you cry and it's just **colored dirt**.
Chuck Close
Image
At the same time that I'm finding the color world I want, I'm also trying to make the imagery, you know, by the nature of the strokes themselves.
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
I learned you could suffer a terrible tragedy and still be happy again.
Chuck Close