Chuck Close Inspired Portraits

Charles Thomas "Chuck" Close (born July 5, 1940) is an American painter and photographer.  He achieved fame as a photorealist, through his massive-scale portraits.  Photorealist is when you create art that looks like a photograph. Chuck suffers from prosopagnosia (face blindness) and has suggested that this condition is what first inspired him to create portraits.  By painting portraits, he is better able to recognize and remember faces.  He also has a learning disability and struggled with reading and writing.

On December 7, 1988, Close felt a strange pain in his chest. He suffered a seizure which left him paralyzed from the neck down. The cause was diagnosed as a spinal artery collapse.  Most believed that was the end of his career but Close did not let his injury prevent him for making art.  Close continued to paint with a brush strapped onto his wrist with tape, creating large portraits in low-resolution grid squares.

 

Student's in Miss Church's studio art class created large scale portraits of the High School administrators.  Each student was responsible for one 12x12 inch square.  They had to grid the original image and using math to create a large scale reproduction of the photograph.

 

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