Chuck Close- 2/22/15

Chuck Close is an American photorealist painter and photographer. He quotes "I went to the Seattle art museum when I was 14. I saw this Jackson Polluck drip painting with aluminum paint, tar, gravel and all that other stuff. I was absolutely outraged and disturbed. It was so far from what I thought art was. However, within 2 or 3 days, I was dripping paint all over my old paintings. In a way I've been chasing that experience ever since." Chuck graduated from The University of Washington in Seattle. He then won a scholarship to the Yale Summer School of Art and Music, he then continued school there. Most of Closes' early pieces were huge painting of friends and other artists. Chuck suffers from face recognition, and says that painting helps him remember the faces of people. Chuck worked/ works and mastered working with many of these materials; ink, silk, watercolor, crayons, etching and woodcuts, etc. He suffered a seizure in 1988 and was paralyzed from the neck down, however he continues to paint with a brush taped around his wrist. We watched a short clip of him in class and I was amazed at how wonderful he still is at everything. He loves painting and it is very obvious when you see him working in his studio. His own self portrait (younger) , shown below, was originally a photograph that he started painting, he paints by squares, and this is my favorite piece of his. The second self portrait was painted in 1998, and it shows the transition in his works.