Pixelations and Gas Stations

This morning on CBS Sunday Morning, their news staff chronicled the story of Chuck Close, a disabled portrait artist who is enjoying a return to prominence; not by overcoming his disability, but by reacting to it and learning to function despite the limitations imposed upon him by a blood clot on his spine.

However, my interest stemmed not so much from his triumph but from the manner in which he learned to adapt and to change his work. Once, his portraits were so lifelike that often they were mistaken for photographs, albeit that the canvas stood ten feet tall and eight feet wide. Now, his technique has changed. He scans portraits with his computer and breaks them down into tiny cubes of pixelated color and light. Then, he adapts the colors of the squares.

"The building blocks for my paintings are not symbolic," he told Sunday Morning anchor Charles Osgood. "They don't stand for anything. It's a little bit like an architect — picking up a brick. You stack up the bricks one way, you get a cathedral. You stack the bricks up another way, and you get a gas station, you know."

The results are spectacular and vivid. The emphasis on each square determines the effect in totality, producing a work that can still be recognized as an identifiable portrait, but enhanced to produce the artist's interpretation.

As I watched and listened, I realized that in many ways, my writing mirrors his technique, or at least I hope it does. Perhaps I shall never gain his excellence of interpretation, but I suspect that my selection of material and writing style differ from his only in this aspect. Chuck Close was a fine portrait painter before his style evolved--therein lies the difference. Even so, for me there is victory. After all these years, I finally understand that I am not demented, psychotic or crazy.

I merely interpret the data from a different spectrum of light. My pixel squares may just reflect a unique translation of the colors-- maybe I just build gas stations in the shape of cathedrals.