Close has grown to believe that his work is driven by his lifelong learning difficulties such as dyslexia and prosopanosia (the inability to remember faces). He feels he was compelled to make portraits by his need to commit faces to memory. His learning difficulties also provide a key to his working methods. He uses a grid to break down every image that he paints into small incremental units so that he can comfortably focus on each part to avoid being overwhelmed by the whole. Consequently, no problem becomes too big to be solved. You no longer need worry about drawing the entire face as you can tackle it incrementally, one bit at a time until the whole image is complete. Close works from Polaroid photographs on which he overlays a grid to... [http://www.artyfactory.com/art_appreciation/portraits/chuck_close.html] This study for a well-known self-portrait hints at his process. (https://rideingthedragon.tumblr.com/post/162222381459/huariqueje-self-portrait-reading-on-a-blanket)