Though artist Chuck Close has devoted his life to portraiture, his paintings rarely comport with that genre's traditional purpose. His early photorealist images, which are created by overlaying a grid on a photograph and painstakingly copying the image cell by cell, are, to the naked eye, nearly undifferentiable from photographs. Furthermore, Close's emphasis is on the disembodied head itself, expressionless and devoid of any overt personality. He has never acceded to commissions, relying on both his own image and his friends as models. In 1988, a collapsed spinal artery caused almost total paralysis, but Close has continued to work. His freer paintings evince a natural extension of an augmented interest in the minute grid over the total work that predated his illness. This non-privileging of any particular part of the canvas finds its inspiration, oddly enough, in abstract expressionism, despite the apparent inconsonance of the two techniques.