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All The Best Ideas Come Out Of The Process; They Come Out Of The Work Itself. Things Occur To You.if You're Sitting Around Trying To Dream Up A Great Idea, You Can Sit There A Long Time Before Anything Happens.but If You Just Get To Work, Something Will Occur To You And Something Else Will Occur To You And Something Else That You Reject Will Push You In Another Direction.

-Chuck Close

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All The Best Ideas

Chuck Close

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All The Best Ideas Come Out Of The Process; They Come Out Of The Work Itself. Things Occur To You.if You're Sitting Around Trying To Dream Up A Great Idea, You Can Sit There A Long Time Before Anything Happens.but If You Just Get To Work, Something Will Occur To You And Something Else Will Occur To You And Something Else That You Reject Will Push You In Another Direction.

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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.

I Have Always Attempted To Create Images That Deliver The Maximum Amount Of Information About The Subject.

Ive Said Its A Little Bit Like A Magician Performing For A Convention Of Magicians... All The Magicians In The Audience Watching This Illusion-do They See The Illusion, Or Do They See The Device That Made The Illusion? Probably They See A Little Of Both.

I Can't Always Reach The Image In My Mind... Almost Never, In Fact... So That The Abstract Image I Create Is Not Quite There, But It Gets To The Point Where I Can Leave It.

The Advice I Like To Give Young Artists, Or Really Anybody Who’ll Listen To Me, Is Not To Wait Around For Inspiration. Inspiration Is For Amateurs; The Rest Of Us Just Show Up And Get To Work.

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After A Few Days In Hospital, I Was Thinking, Oh, Gee - I Raised In A Church, Protestant Upbringing Which I'd Rejected As An Adult - I'm Lying In Bed Thinking, Hmmm, Maybe I Ought To Pray. They Always Say There Are No Atheists In A Foxhole... And I Thought, Here I Am In A Pretty Good-sized Foxhole... And I Thought Naahhh. I Wouldn't Respect Any God Who Would Listen To Me After I'd Rejected Him So Vociferously.

If It Looks Like Art, Chances Are It's Somebody Else's Art.

Inspiration Is For Amateurs. Professionals Work Everyday. Personally The Best Inspiration Is A Deadline.

Painting Is A Lie. It's The Most Magic Of All Media, The Most Transcendent. It Makes Space Where There Is No Space.

Inspiration Is For Amateurs. The Rest Of Us Just Show Up And Get To Work. If You Wait Around For The Clouds To Part And A Bolt Of Lightning To Strike You In The Brain, You Are Not Going To Make An Awful Lot Of Work. All The Best Ideas Come Out Of The Process; They Come Out Of The Work Itself.

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'm Not By Nature A Terribly Intuitive Person; I Need To Build A Situation In Which I Will Behave More Intuitively, And That Has Really Changed The Life Of My Work - I Found A Way To Trick Myself Into Being Intuitive.

While Photography Is The Easiest Medium In Which To Be Competent, It Is The Hardest In Which To Develop An Idiosyncratic Personal Vision.

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.

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I Think Women Realise That I Love Women, And Very Often Women Seem To Love Me.

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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.

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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.

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From My Point Of View, Photography Never Got Any Better Than It Was In 1840.

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You Know, The Way Art History Is Taught, Often There's Nothing That Tells You Why The Painting Is Great. The Description Of A Lousy Painting And The Description Of A Great Painting Will Very Much Sound The Same.

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Time And Energy

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