Close encounter

Bill Clinton looks down at me with that famous, lazy grin. His perfect American teeth show bright white and his blue eyes lock on to mine. I take a few steps forward (who wouldn’t?) but as I draw closer something odd happens to Bill: his face blurs, its outline distorts, wobbling as if underwater. A few steps more and his features have begun to pixelate into small squares and the smooth pink of his cheeks has unmixed itself — separating out into a hundred different colours. Bill is going to pieces. Closer still, now eyeball to nostril with President Clinton, I lose all sense that I’m looking at a portrait: in front of me is an abstract painting — a vast grid-full of sherbert swirls: mauves, oranges, lemon yellow, fuchsia.

As I walk backwards, Bill’s 9-ft oil-painted head pulls itself together and begins to grin again, and, beside me, the artist, Chuck Close — dressed in designer black in his electric wheelchair — grins too.