Quotes by 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 faces, so I'm sure it's what drove me to portraits in the first place.
• 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.
• Sometimes I really want to paint somebody and I don't get a photograph that I want to work from.
• 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.
• Part of the joy of looking at art is getting in sync in some ways with the decision-making process that the artist used and the record that's embedded in the work.
• Painting is the most magical of mediums. The transcendence is truly amazing to me every time I go to a museum and I see how somebody figured another way to rub colored dirt on a flat surface and make space where there is no space or make you think of a life experience.
• 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.
• It's always a pleasure to talk about someone else's work.
• 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.
• I'm plagued with indecision in my life. I can't figure out what to order in a restaurant.
• I think most paintings are a record of the decisions that the artist made. I just perhaps make them a little clearer than some people have.
• I discovered about 150 dots is the minimum number of dots to make a specific recognizable person. You can make something that looks like a head, with fewer dots, but you won't be able to give much information about who it is.
• I did some pastels and I did other pieces in which there was just basically one color per square, and then they would get bigger and I could get 2 or 3 colors into the square, and ultimately I just started making oil paintings.
• 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.
• All the fingerprint paintings are done without a grid.
• I'm very learning-disabled, and I think it drove me to what I'm doing.
• Sculpture occupies real space like we do... you walk around it and relate to it almost as another person or another object.