Chuck Close

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

“Every child should have a chance to feel special.”

“I have no intention of flattering people. I like wrinkles and crow's feet and flaws, and somebody should know, if I'm going to photograph them, that's going to show up, you know?”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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