Chuck Close > Quotes

“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. 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. Things occur to you. If you're sitting around trying to dream up a great art 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. Inspiration is absolutely unnecessary and somehow deceptive. You feel like you need this great idea before you can get down to work, and I find that's almost never the case.”
― Chuck Close

“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 lightening 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.”
― Chuck Close, Chuck Close

“Amateurs look for inspiration; the rest of us just get up and go to work.”
― Chuck Close

“Inspiration is for amateurs. I just get to work.”
― Chuck Close

“Art saved my life”
― Chuck Close

“Far more interesting than problem solving is problem creation.”
― Chuck Close

“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.”
― Chuck Close, Chuck Close: Face Book

“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.”
― Chuck Close

“Every idea occurs while you are working. If you are sitting around waiting for inspiration, you could sit there forever.”
― Chuck Close, Chuck Close: Face Book

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

“Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work.”
― Chuck Close

“Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work”
― Chuck Close

“A quilt may take a year, but if you just keep doing it, you get a quilt.”
― Chuck Close

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