Chuck Close was an American painter. He was from Monroe, Washington, between Seattle and the Cascade mountains!

Chuck Close

Close’s early paintings were very large and very realistic. This is a painting of his friend and composer, Philip Glass

Chuck Close had “Face Blindness” or a condition where it was hard to recognize faces. That might be why he painted so many faces

Chuck Close also took photographs, and in fact, he used a lot of his photos as references for his huge paintings.

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Later on in his life, he painted portraits using an unusual technique he developed. Almost like a mosaic or a pixel, his paintings are made up of a grid of shapes and colors that, when looked at far away, appear to be a face.

Close overcame a lot of obstacles in order to create his artwork. In fact, he was paralized and in a wheel chair for about half his life. Here he is creating one of his “Grid” portraits

Today, we will be creating a painting in the style of Chuck Close, using a grid and different colors and shapes.