Chuck Close painted like no one else ever quite had. His gigantic, hyper-realist portraits (based on extreme close-ups he’d taken in his studio) were almost indistinguishable from photographic enlargements.

His was a work about process, and he did it tremendously well for a couple decades. Then he couldn’t anymore. He could barely move. But he reinvented his process and did some of the best work of his career. Colleen Newvine tells the story here on her blog Newvine Growing.