Chuck Close Quotes

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

I think the problem with the arts in America is how unimportant it seems to be in our educational system.

Amateurs look for inspiration; the rest of us just get up and go to work.

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.

Women in general interest me. I like how women are more liable to talk about real things, personal things.

You can give the same recipe to ten cooks, and some make it come alive, and some make a flat souffle. A system doesn't guarantee anything.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

While photography is the easiest medium in which to be competent, it is the hardest in which to develop an idiosyncratic personal vision.

I think women realise that I love women, and very often women seem to love me.

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

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.

Paintings can make you cry and it's just **colored dirt**.

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

Sometimes I really want to paint somebody and I don't get a photograph that I want to work from.

From my point of view, photography never got any better than it was in 1840.

Painting is a lie. It's the most magic of all media, the most transcendent. It makes space where there is no space.

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

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.

It's always a pleasure to talk about someone else's work.

All the fingerprint paintings are done without a grid.

Of all the artists who emerged in the '80s, I think perhaps Cindy Sherman is the most important.

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.

Painting is the frozen evidence of a performance.

I've always thought that problem-solving is highly overrated and that problem creation is far more interesting.

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.

Every child should have a chance to feel special.

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

There are things about signing on to a process over the long term that protect you from the buffeting winds of change.

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

No one was more surprised than me when my paintings started selling, except maybe my dealer.

There's something Zen-like about the way I work - it's like raking gravel in a Zen Buddhist garden.

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

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

Those who are waiting for an epiphany to strike may wait forever. The artist simply goes to work, making art, both good and not so good.

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

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.

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

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

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

I don't care about the Guggenheim. The Guggenheim isn't involved in anything that I am interested in. I don't care about motorcycles and Armani suits.

The first thing I do is take Polaroids of the sitter - 10 or 12 color Polaroids and eight or 10 black-and whites.

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

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

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.

Losing my father at a tender age was extremely important in being able to accept what happened to me later when I became a quadriplegic.

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