In Which Chuck Close Drives Himself Into His Own Idiosyncratic Corner Where No One Else's Answers Fit The Questions He Is Asking

"I was a big, big fan as a student of de Kooning, who I still consider the greatest American artist of the 20th century. And I loved him so much and I was -- I painted way more than my share of de Koonings. In fact when I met him ... late in his life I said 'It's very nice to meet somebody who has painted more de Koonings than I have.'

"But one of the problems of being a good student -- I was a good student --  was that I knew what good art looked like and I could demonstrate that I knew what it looked like but it must look like someone else's art or it wouldn't look like art. And I couldn't find a way to work out of de Kooning and out of my heroes without making weak impersonations of their work.

"And one of the wonderful things about having purged myself, purged my work of all those influences and driving myself into my own idiosyncratic corner where no one else's answers would fit the question that I was asking myself was that ultimately over the years I found a way to get a lot of that de Kooning color and some of the marks and things that I loved so much back into my work, but now I get to use de Kooning color and make a Chuck Close instead of use de Kooning color to make a de Kooning."

From an interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air in 1998