Chuck Close. I just finished reading a fantastic book about him, written by John Guare, designed by Chip Kidd. There are some thoughts of Chuck's that are worth keeping to memory.

"One of the things the sixties was about was a belief in the process, a belief that the process would set you free. All you had to do was follow the process wherever it would take you. ... Richard Serra and Robert Smithson, my contemporaries, all of us coming up together at the same time, had a belief that if you only have the courage to back yourself into your own corner you would find your way out, but if you stay in the middle of the room you'll be with everyone else and only everybody else's solution will occur to you. We believed that problem creating was more interesting than problem solving, that if you can ask yourself the interesting question, the solution will come, that you must purge yourself of the ghosts of everyone else's solutions by putting yourself in the position where none of their answers is applicable."

You have to admire someone who emerges from such an event in their life and continues to produce stunning, deep, beautiful work. It's hard enough sometimes to get pen to paper, and yet Chuck Close breaks through his hardship, and produces. I think this is a result of his years of practise - he will find a way, because painting is what he does. I keep this in mind when I want to start new habits, or want to break old ones, that it is only in the practise that it will come to pass.