Quotes from Chuck Close

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

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

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

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

Like any corporation, I have the benefit of the brainpower of everyone who is working for me. It all ends up being my work, the corporate me, but everyone extends ideas and comes up with suggestions.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

Art saved my life

Far more interesting than problem solving is problem creation.

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.

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.

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

The worst possible thing in the world can happen to you, and you will overcome it. You will be happy again.

Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work

A quilt may take a year, but if you just keep doing it, you get a quilt.

I always thought that inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work.

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

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