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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. "

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" You don't have to reinvent the wheel every day. Today you will do what you did yesterday, and tomorrow you will do what you did today. Eventually you will get somewhere. "

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Every Day

Tomorrow

You

" 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. "

" Sculpture occupies real space like we do... you walk around it and relate to it almost as another person or another object. "

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

" Never let anyone define what you are capable of by using parameters that don't apply to you. "

" 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 frozen evidence of a performance. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" You don't have to have a great art idea - just get to work and something will happen. So that's pretty much my modus operandi and pretty much my principal position, such as it is. "

" Photography is the easiest medium with which to be merely competent. Almost anybody can be competent. It's the hardest medium in which to have some sort of personal vision and to have a signature style. "

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

" Every child should have a chance to feel special. "

" 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. "

" There are so many artists that are dyslexic or learning disabled, it's just phenomenal. There's also an unbelievably high proportion of artists who are left-handed, and a high correlation between left-handedness and learning disabilities. "

" 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. "

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

" 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. "

Chuck Close

Work

Recognition

" 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. "

Chuck Close

Life

Experience

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "