Chuck Close Chuck Close (born July 5, 1940, Monroe, Washington—died August 19, 2021, Oceanside, New York) was an American painter and visual artist who made massive-scale photorealistic and abstract portraits of himself and others. He is best known for his large-format photographs that he meticulously transferred onto enormous canvases using a grid system and acrylic paints—a technique that revolutionized portraiture and cemented his place as one of the most influential artists of the late 20th century. Despite suffering paralysis from a spinal artery occlusion in 1988, Close continued to cr…