Best 93 quotes of Chuck Close on MyQuotes

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.

After a few days in hospital, I was thinking, Oh, gee - I raised in a church, Protestant upbringing which I'd rejected as an adult - I'm lying in bed thinking, Hmmm, maybe I ought to pray. They always say there are no atheists in a foxhole... and I thought, Here I am in a pretty good-sized foxhole... and I thought Naahhh. I wouldn't respect any God who would listen to me after I'd rejected him so vociferously.

All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself.

All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself. Things occur to you.If you're sitting around trying to dream up a great idea, you can sit there a long time before anything happens.But if you just get to work, something will occur to you and something else will occur to you and something else that you reject will push you in another direction.

All the fingerprint paintings are done without a grid.

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.

Any innovation that is evident in my paintings is a direct result of something that happened in the course of making a print.

A photograph doesn't gain weight or lose weight, or change from being happy to being sad. It's frozen. You can use it, then recycle it.

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.

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.

Ease is the enemy of the artist. When things get too easy, you're in trouble.

Every child should have a chance to feel special.

Every idea occurs while you are working. If you are sitting around waiting for inspiration, you could sit there forever.

Far more interesting than problem solving is problem creation.

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.

Having a routine, knowing what to do, gives me a sense of freedom and keeps me from going crazy. It's calming.

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.

I always thought problem solving was greatly overrated - and that the most important thing was problem creation.

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.

I am going for a level of perfection that is only mine... Most of the pleasure is in getting the last little piece perfect.

I build a painting by putting little marks together-some look like hot dogs, some like doughnuts.

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.

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 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 don't believe in inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs. Some of the time you know you're cooking, and the rest of the time, you just do it.

I don't work with inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs. I just get to work.

If it looks like art, chances are it's somebody else's art.

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.

If you're overwhelmed by the size of a problem, break it down into smaller pieces.

I have always attempted to create images that deliver the maximum amount of information about the subject.

I have a great deal of difficulty recognizing faces, especially if I haven't - if I've just met somebody, it's hopeless.

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.

I learned you could suffer a terrible tragedy and still be happy again.

I love making art... It's largely how I see myself. I'm an artist; therefore I have to make art.

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.

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.

I'm plagued with indecision in my life. I can't figure out what to order in a restaurant.

I'm poor white trash from the state of Washington.

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.

I'm very learning-disabled, and I think it drove me to what I'm doing.

I never said the camera was truth. It is, however, a more accurate and more objective way of seeing.

In life you can be dealt a winning hand of cards and you can find a way to lose, and you can be dealt a losing hand and find a way to win. True in art and true in life: you pretty much make your own destiny. If you are by nature an optimistic person, which I am, that puts you in a better position to be lucky in life.

In my art, I deconstruct and then I reconstruct, so visual perception is one of my primary interests.

Inspiration is for amateurs. professionals work everyday. Personally the best inspiration is a deadline.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I only have so much time and energy and money, and I'm going to put it into my work.

I only use three primaries, so the nice thing is I can't have favorite colors.