Chuck Close 

Born on July 5th, 1940 in Washington, most of his early works were large scale portraits based off photographs. Throughout his career he has learned to add to his artistic arsenal in order to create his own distinct style of portrait paintings. 

Although over the years his style has changed somewhat the technique is still the same, as he will grid every photo he copies and copies section by section.

Close suffers from prosopagnosia which means he is not able to recognise faces easily, and it was later in his career when he started to wonder why he was always drawn to portraits when he realised that subconsciously it was because it helped him to remember faces.

Later in his life in 1988 a spinal artery collapse left him severely paralysed and bound to a wheelchair, however this only slightly dented his career as he went on to take a greater interest in the photographic side of portraits. 

Personally I really like Chuck Close's portraits, I like the bright and vivid colours used in each painting they bring a sense of liveliness to the piece. 

The grid method is also a great way of breaking up the composition, having many different segments coloured but together creating an accurate portrait. By creating all these different segments he is able to add emphasis to the shaded areas, this technique is also effective because it creates texture adding more life to the painting.