Close’s painting
Based on where one stands, they will read the Chuck Close painting differently. One can easily alternate the readings of the painting by alternating the direction and distance from which one sees the painting. When one views the painting from a distance, they will realize that it is almost similar to a high-resolution photograph. When you see it up close, the painting becomes challenging to scan. Often it will take the ambiguous features of landscape painting. However, changing the distance does not detract from the effect of the painting. Chuck Close is a great artist, and his working method is excellent. He knows how to engage with the image close up and often do not view his painting from a distance. Surprisingly, the paintings do not change break-taking impact even if viewed from a distance.
Chuck Close begins his painting by overlaying grids to divide the image into smaller sections. Close begins to paint a portrait by applying a background color to each image section of the grid. He is keen on the color choice to make sure that they are similar in tonal value as those in the corresponding section on the grid. Close will then methodically scales up and carefully and thoroughly paints inch by inch until he is done onto a vast canvas and will draw a parallel with knitting while building the painting row by row. He then begins filing each image section with about four to five painted outlines with distinct colored forms. Usually, he uses simple shapes such as squares, right-angles, rectangles, lozenges, among others as a vocabulary to draw freely painted outlines. The activities will ultimately make each small section result in an abstract color study with a good mixing hue that forms visual chord. The result is a photorealistic image of the body part, mostly a face with a more excellent likeness to the reality. His experience with painting makes him capable of understanding how the chord will appear and read from a distance as well as how it will blend with adjacent sections to create tones and colors of the face image. Besides, Close used a wide range of techniques and material such as the acrylic, watercolor, photography and others in his paintings.
While a photograph is too descriptive, Close’s paintings are less descriptive, and he often overcomes this through the colorful impact of in his image sections. Also, the photograph usually has a higher resolution image while Close’s painting surfaces have a lower resolution image due to the extensively increased grid size; the abstract quality of color and pattern is amplified. Close’s use of compositional devices to structure the surface of its image makes people think that his paintings are similar to photographs. However, Close often employed these devices to find what he terms as the beat of the grid which ensure placement base on the image to break the image most excellently and not literary aim to scale up photograph which is often too prescriptive.
Close exploits grids and an emphasize focus of vocabulary of shape, marks and color to provide an engaging optical experience to his image viewers. He understands the effect of color and grids, which gives his painting a similar view and impact regardless of the distance. The explicit use of grids gives his painting the ability to control the viewer’s interactions with the image to some measured capacity. Besides, the increased focus of vocabulary of shape, marks and color emphasizes the abstract comprehension of the image and increases one’s awareness of the structural element impact of the grid. This is what balances the representational, abstract and conceptual qualities of his paintings.