Thursday, July 28, 2016

President Obama Endorses Hillary Clinton for POTUS

Thank you for this incredible journey. Let’s keep it going. God bless the United States of America!" —




Thursday, July 21, 2016

Cross Currents: Don't Forget the Water - Salish Sea

by Gregg Chadwick



Gregg Chadwick
Salish Sea
30"x24" oil on linen 2014 

Two years ago on a technicolor blue day, I stood on the deck of the Wenatchee ferry cutting through the choppy sea from Seattle to Bainbridge Island. The vessel was named for the Wenatchi people who originally lived in the shadow of the Columbia and Wenatchee Rivers in Eastern Washington State. We are riding on a ship of memory.



In the Yakama language, wenatchi means "river flowing from canyon." The Wenatchee River was home to a vibrant salmon run prior to the damming of the Columbia River which impeded the salmon's journey. Like the fish, the Wenatchi tribe was also blocked from its ancestral waterways as the US government rounded up the Native Americans in Washington State and collected them in reservations far from their native lands. 



I often think about the rivers, lakes, towns and cities we have named after the original Americans. The absence of most of their culture in our increasingly mini-malled landscape points to the brutal erasure of Indian tribes across the United States. The dominant culture in America seems to continually romanticize, while at the same time ostracizing, the rich history of Native Americans. The writer Sherman Alexie will have none of that, thank you. Alexie grew up on the Spokane Indian Reservation in Wellpinit, Washington before graduating from Washington State University. Alexie is a major player in contemporary writing. His well-received novels, Reservation Blues and Indian Killer helped pave the way for his foray into film with Smoke Signals and The Business of Fancydancing. Alexie writes with courage about his experiences as an Indian in a white culture. Alexie also writes, as Andrea Vogt in Washington State Magazine reported, with "brutal honesty-some might even say disdain-about ignorance, alcoholism, and other problems on the rez."  

The Business of Fancydancing leads Gene Tagaban (Aristotle Joseph), Michelle St. John (Agnes Roth), and Evan Adams (Seymour Polatkin), with writer/director Sherman Alexie.photo by Lance Muresan
Courtesy Washington State Magazine
For Alexie and other Native American activists ignoring the problems exacerbated by systemic racism in the US is out of the question. With that in mind, for over 20 years an annual inter-tribal Canoe Journey has been held on the Salish Sea. The Salish Sea is a 6,500 square mile ecosystem consisting of the Puget Sound Basin (US) and the Georgia Basin (Canada). 
Canoe Journey 2016, Paddle to Nisqually, continues the inter-tribal celebration and annual gathering of Northwest indigenous nations. The website for Paddle to Nisqually goes into great detail about the history and significance of the event:
"Canoe Journey gatherings are rich in meaning and cultural significance. Canoe families travel great distances as their ancestors did and participating in the journey requires physical and spiritual discipline. At each stop, canoe families follow certain protocols, they ask for permission to come ashore, often in their native languages. At night in longhouses there is gifting, honoring and the sharing of traditional prayers, drumming, songs and dances. Meals, including evening dinners of traditional foods, are provided by the host nations.
When Europeans began exploring the region, the tribes were used to meeting and welcoming strangers who arrived by boat. Sadly, the Europeans did not understand the hospitality culture of the coastal tribes as the tribes were displaced over the next two centuries. The canoe culture, as practiced by the Native American tribes of the Pacific Northwest, had all but disappeared until the Canoe Journey events began to grow in the 90’s. Techniques of canoe making and use had largely vanished and fewer and fewer tribal people knew how to pull a traditional canoe. Now...a new tradition is well into the making and a cultural resurgence is underway."
The Salish Sea is a 6,500 square mile ecosystem consisting of the Puget Sound Basin (US) and the Georgia Basin (Canada). 
The theme for this years Canoe Journey is "Don't Forget the Water" in honor of the Nisqually Tribe's Mountain story.  



The Nisqually Tribe finds hope in the annual canoe journey and its focus on community building:
"The Nisqually River Council’s Nisqually Watershed Stewardship Plan (NWSP) recognizes that community wellness is a key component of creating a sustainable watershed. We embrace the people who live in the Nisqually watershed, their sense of identity and responsibility that has existed for generations. Strong communities require, among other things, access to the arts and high community health indicators. Paddle to Nisqually represents a unique opportunity to highlight the many efforts the Nisqually Tribe makes to promote community wellness, including a culture free of drugs and alcohol, access to traditional and healthy foods, and close ties to Nisqually heritage."
Looking back now on that day on the ferry, I see things through the veil of my painting and the complicated history of the region. There is an accumulation of memories gathered in this Salish Sea as the Wenatchee ferry carries its passengers towards their destination. How many canoes over the centuries have traversed this same path?
In my painting Salish Sea, who is the rider on the bow of this ship of memory? 



Gregg Chadwick's Salish Sea is on exhibit at Saatchi Art through September 29, 2016 in the group exhibition Cross Currents. There will be an opening on Thursday, July 21, 2016 from 6-9pm. For more info and to RSVP please visit:  
http://www.eventbrite.com/e/cross-currents-new-works-by-la-artists-presented-by-saatchi-art-tickets-26159942091?aff=fb


CROSS CURRENTS
New Works by Los Angeles Artists 
Saatchi Art, the world's leading online gallery, presents new works in celebration of LA's first citywide Public Art Biennial, Current: LA.
July 21, 2016
6–7pm VIP Preview
7–9pm Public Reception
Featuring special musical guest
POWDERCOAT
1655 26th Street
Santa Monica, CA 90404
RSVP by July 20

CROSS CURRENTS is a new exhibition on view at Saatchi Art in Santa Monica. Curated by Katherine Henning, Associate Curator, and Jessica McQueen, Assistant Curator, the exhibition continues Saatchi Art's series of shows around the world.
The exhibition highlights the work of 14 emerging artists represented by Saatchi Art, the world’s leading online gallery: Gregg Chadwick, Fabio Coruzzi, Charlotte Evans, Art van Kraft, Chase Langford, Koen Lybaert, Lola Mitchell, Harry Moody, Relja Penezic, Kelly Puissegur, Stephen Rowe, Erin Tengquist, Dean West, and Naomi White.
The exhibition is on view from July 21 through September 29, 2016 at Saatchi Art, located at 1655 26th Street, Santa Monica, CA. Gallery hours: Monday through Friday 10am-5pm and Saturday by appointment. Please email to schedule a visit during gallery hours. Gallery contact:curator@saatchiart.com.
All works are on sale at the exhibition and online at Saatchi Art: saatchiart.com/show/cross-currents
#CrossCurrents






Wednesday, July 20, 2016

Cross Currents: Ponte di Castelvecchio - Water and the Image of Time

by Gregg Chadwick



Gregg Chadwick
Ponte di Castelvecchio (Verona)
48"x36" oil on linen 2016


Last year, perched above a Renaissance era bridge in Verona, Italy, I watched a light rainfall and a swollen river rush by. The smell of rain filled the air. Swifts darted across the milky sky. Like gauze stretched across a stage set, the mix of rain, bus exhaust, and a distant sun breaking through the mist cloaked the moment in a spell of timelessness. I thought of the late Russian emigre writer Joseph Brodsky and his idea that water is the image of time. Often on trips to Europe, I will carry a battered copy of Brodsky's verse to help inspire my ramblings. Here in the Veneto, I am reminded of Brodsky's love of Italy and Venice in particular. I turn the pages of Brodsky's Watermark and find the passage I am looking for:
"I always adhered to the idea that God is time, or at least that His spirit is. Perhaps this idea was even of my own manufacture, but now I don't remember. In any case, I always thought that if the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the water, the water was bound to reflect it. Hence my sentiment for water, for its folds, wrinkles, and ripples, and – as I am a Northerner – for its grayness. I simply think that water is the image of time, and every New Year's Eve, in somewhat pagan fashion, I try to find myself near water, preferably near a sea or an ocean, to watch the emergence of a new helping, a new cupful of time from it. I am not looking for a naked maiden riding on a shell; I am looking for either a cloud or the crest of a wave hitting the shore at midnight. That, to me, is time coming out of water, and I stare at the lace-like pattern it puts on the shore, not with a gypsy-like knowing, but with tenderness and with gratitude."
 I look up from by book and peer down at the river's edge. In the reeds and shallows small fish chasing food dart where the current eddies. In this reverie, my mind creates stories - If Brodsky is right these pools hold time in stasis. If I had a long net, maybe I could dip into the water and pull out living memories. A motorcycle roaring by on the road behind me breaks the spell and I think of darker times. During the Allied advance in World War II up through the Italian boot, the occupying German army drew a do not pass line at Verona because of its major transportation links running north to Austria. This bridge beneath me, the Ponte di Castelvecchio, bears the scars of that conflict. Retreating Nazi forces blew the bridge up in 1945. After the war, the pieces were collected and reformed into the bridge's current form. Time shapes all. 

I rush back to my studio on Via Filippini and lay in with liquid oil paints the initial layers of my first study for Ponte di Castelvecchio. 



Gregg Chadwick
Study for  Il Sole nella Pioggia : Ponte Castelvecchio Verona 
oil on canvas 2015
private collection - Verona, Italy
photo taken at Via Filippini Studio, Verona, Italy 2015

On the canvas, I brush in greens, milky blues, and brick reds. The structure of the bridge begins to emerge as I cut into the wet paint with a loaded brush of lighter color. It is a large canvas in my small 16th-century space and it quickly becomes a presence in the room. After the initial surface is complete, I lean the wet painting against the plaster wall. 




Gregg Chadwick's Via Filippini Studio, Verona, Italy 2015
I stand across the room and gaze at the painting. Even at this stage, the artwork has taken on a life of its own and I need to respect that. I see hints of Corot, maybe Degas? Perhaps I was thinking of Giorgione's The Tempest now housed at the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice, Italy?



Giorgione Banner with Detail of The Tempest
Venice, Italy 2010

I spend time with the painting, then out into the vibrant Veronese streets for dinner. Tomorrow, I will look at the painting again and maybe, if the paint is dry enough in the humid summer air, add more layers of color. In the morning light with an espresso in hand, I will see more clearly.

A few weeks later upon its completion, I left the study with a new collector in Verona and started on a final version in my Santa Monica studio upon my return from Italy.

As a painting progresses, I will often find hints of its future shape in historical artworks as mentioned above, or in films, or books. When I was in graduate school at NYU, I studied not far from Verona in Venice. I often think of my instructor Giovanni Soccol who provided the art direction for Nicolas Roeg's eerie Venice-based film Don't Look Now. The film is based on a story by Daphne Du Maurier and stars Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland as a couple mourning the recent loss of a child. Soccol's artistic vision is evident throughout the film and I remember traveling to sites in Venice with Giovanni where the film was shot. As a Venetian, water is an important subject for Soccol and is often poetically referenced in his film work and his paintings. (See the video below)



Another striking element from Don't Look Now has found an echo in my painting Ponte di Castelvecchio (Verona). The color red is a character in Don't Look Now as much as Christie and Sutherland. That pop of color against the green-blue water, blue and grey skies, and tawny stone of Venice finds an echo in my painting. In Ponte di Castelvecchio (Verona), the splashes of red and orange that mark the umbrellas swiftly carried across the bridge find their antecedent in the red jackets and blood eddies in Soccol and Roeg's film. Water, blood, and time.



Gregg Chadwick's Ponte di Castelvecchio (Verona) is on exhibit at Saatchi Art through September 29, 2016 in the group exhibition Cross Currents. There will be an opening on Thursday, July 21, 2016 from 6-9pm. For more info and to RSVP please visit:  
http://www.eventbrite.com/e/cross-currents-new-works-by-la-artists-presented-by-saatchi-art-tickets-26159942091?aff=fb

CROSS CURRENTS
New Works by Los Angeles Artists 
Saatchi Art, the world's leading online gallery, presents new works in celebration of LA's first citywide Public Art Biennial, Current: LA.
July 21, 2016
6–7pm VIP Preview
7–9pm Public Reception
Featuring special musical guest
POWDERCOAT
1655 26th Street
Santa Monica, CA 90404
RSVP by July 20

CROSS CURRENTS is a new exhibition on view at Saatchi Art in Santa Monica. Curated by Katherine Henning, Associate Curator, and Jessica McQueen, Assistant Curator, the exhibition continues Saatchi Art's series of shows around the world.
The exhibition highlights the work of 14 emerging artists represented by Saatchi Art, the world’s leading online gallery: Gregg Chadwick, Fabio Coruzzi, Charlotte Evans, Art van Kraft, Chase Langford, Koen Lybaert, Lola Mitchell, Harry Moody, Relja Penezic, Kelly Puissegur, Stephen Rowe, Erin Tengquist, Dean West, and Naomi White.
The exhibition is on view from July 21 through September 29, 2016 at Saatchi Art, located at 1655 26th Street, Santa Monica, CA. Gallery hours: Monday through Friday 10am-5pm and Saturday by appointment. Please email to schedule a visit during gallery hours. Gallery contact:curator@saatchiart.com.
All works are on sale at the exhibition and online at Saatchi Art: saatchiart.com/show/cross-currents
#CrossCurrents























Sunday, July 17, 2016

Thinking About Peace and Painting With Melissa Pickford

by Gregg Chadwick


Under the Gun Film Poster Reflected in Window at Premiere in Beverly Hills, CA
May 3, 2016
photo by Gregg Chadwick

Just spent a rich afternoon in my studio with Monterey Peninsula College Art Gallery Director Melissa Pickford. Her father Rollin Pickford was an accomplished painter of the California scene and she is an accomplished curator and artist as well. We caught up on our lives, and talked about art, and memory, and time, and we also discussed the recent violent acts across the globe. Writer Anne Lamott on her Facebook page writes, "And then in recent weeks, Orlando, police shooting innocent people, and innocent police officers being shot, and now Nice. How on Earth do we respond, when we are stunned and scared and overwhelmed, to the point of almost disbelieving?" This morning as I scan the reports trickling out from Istanbul about the failed coup in Turkey, a news alert scans across my computer screen informing me of a new shooting of police officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. This summer of discontent continues to boil. But Anne Lamott reminds us,"What is true is that the world has always been this way, people have always been this way, grace always bats last, it just does--" 


As we consider recent events, three books published in the last few years should be on every peacemaker's bookshelf: Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, Michael Shermer's The Moral Arc: How Science Makes Us Better People, and the Dalai Lama's Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World. These three volumes begin with the premise that global violence on an historical timeline is not increasing and that humanity is generally good. As Melissa and I talked about - turn the nightly news on, or scan the latest headlines on your iPhone, and it would seem that the world grows uglier each day. Pinker's book successfully argues that the past was a much more brutal time. Shermer argues that because of the Enlightenment, thinkers consciously applied the methods of science to morally solve social struggles and that again, on an historical timeline, humanity is in the most moral period in history. The Dalai Lama makes it clear in Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World that an individual does not have to be religious to be ethical. Love and compassion are necessities for living. Compassion expresses deep sensitivity to the sufferings of others and a fierce drive to help alleviate those sufferings. Compassion is also the realization that we - human beings, animals, and the earth itself - are all interconnected.


How do we respond to our summer of discontent with compassion? Anne Lamott writes:
"I know that we MUST respond. We must respond with a show of force equal to the violence and tragedies, with love force. Mercy force. Un-negotiated compassion force. Crazy care-giving to the poor and suffering, including ourselves."
And we must continue to paint, to write, to dance, to sing. To value creation over destruction.
We must continue to fight for justice and to celebrate life.