Chuck Close quotes - page 2

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. (Chuck Close)
I think the problem with the arts in America is how unimportant it seems to be in our educational system. View quote
Chuck Close
I think I was driven to paint portraits to commit images of friends and family to memory. I have face blindness, and once a face is flattened out, I can remember it better. View quote
Chuck Close
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. View quote
Chuck Close
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. View quote
Chuck Close
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. View quote
Chuck Close
I have a great deal of difficulty recognizing faces, especially if I haven't - if I've just met somebody, it's hopeless. View quote
Chuck Close
All the fingerprint paintings are done without a grid. View quote
Chuck Close
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. View quote
Chuck Close
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. View quote
Chuck Close
I think women realise that I love women, and very often women seem to love me. (Chuck Close)
I'm very interested in how we read things, especially the link between seeing two-dimensional and three-dimensional images, because of how I read. View quote
Chuck Close
Sometimes I really want to paint somebody and I don't get a photograph that I want to work from. View quote
Chuck Close
In the 7th grade, I made a 20-foot long mural of the Lewis and Clark Trail while we were studying that in history because I knew I wasn't going to be able to spit back the names and the dates and all that stuff on a test. View quote
Chuck Close
I'm very learning-disabled, and I think it drove me to what I'm doing. View quote
Chuck Close
If the bottom dropped out of the market and the artist was not going to sell anything, he or she will keep working, and the dealer will keep trying to find some way to convince somebody to buy this stuff. View quote
Chuck Close
Any artist who goes to Las Vegas is an idiot as far as I am concerned. Whoever goes to Las Vegas can stay in Las Vegas. View quote
Chuck Close
My mother was a piano teacher, my father an inventor. He invented the reflective paint they still use on airstrips. They had faith in my ambition, and I think that made all the difference. View quote
Chuck Close
Amateurs look for inspiration; the rest of us just get up and go to work. View quote
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. View quote
Chuck Close
I'm poor white trash from the state of Washington. (Chuck Close)
The reason I don't like realist, photorealist, neorealist, or whatever, is that I am as interested in the artificial as I am in the real. View quote
Chuck Close
There's something Zen-like about the way I work - it's like raking gravel in a Zen Buddhist garden. View quote
Chuck Close
Neurologically, I'm a quadriplegic, so virtually everything about my work has been driven by my learning disabilities, which are quite severe, and my lack of facial recognition, which I'm sure is what drove me to paint portraits in the first place. View quote
Chuck Close
I'm not by nature a terribly intuitive person; I need to build a situation in which I will behave more intuitively, and that has really changed the life of my work - I found a way to trick myself into being intuitive. View quote
Chuck Close