Chuck Close has collaborated with several master printers to translate his monumental painted portraits into various print media. In the case of Lucas/Woodcut, Karl Hecksher worked from a color reproduction of Close’s painting of the artist Lucas Samaras (now in The Metropolitan Museum of Art) to develop a special process that simulates Close’s abstract system of mark making and complex build-up of pigment. Hecksher made a woodblock composed of multiple parts, like a jigsaw puzzle, and then carefully inked each part with a different color. After printing, Hecksher used a stencil to apply additional layers of color and texture to the image. (RH, 2009)