Speed of Life

This upcoming weekend Phil and I will be presenting the second in a series of exploratory workshops at the Esalen Institute. Gregg Chadwick "Immersed in Silence" 60"x48" oil on linen 2006 Upcoming Workshop at Esalen,Big Sur Phil Cousineau & Gregg Chadwick DEC 22-24, 2006 AT ESALEN INSTITUTE "Genius is the power for lighting your own fire." -- Emerson For thousands, one of the profound mysteries of human adventure has been the creative impulse. The irrepressible urge to leave our mark, to express ourselves, is an essential part of what makes us human. But while creativity is as natural as breathing, it is also notoriously elusive, challenging, and riddled with ordeals--like any grand adventure. This workshop will use a three-stage model of the Creative Journey -- Inspiration, Process, Realization-- to explore what it means to harness our imagination and tend our creative fires over the course of a lifetime. To explore this possibility, the course wi...

Ruth Bernhard "In the Box" gelatin silver print 1962 "My aim is to transform the complexities of the figure into harmonies of simplified forms revealing the innate reality, the life force, the spirit, the inherent symbolism and the underlying remarkable structure – to isolate and give emphasis to form with the greatest clarity." -Ruth Bernhard The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the photographer Ruth Bernhard died yesterday in San Francisco. Ruth Bernhard was a vital presence in the Bay Area art world. I remember running into her at a gallery opening south of Market a few years ago. Her eyes were like open lenses. She seemed to embody Christopher Isherwood's phrase - "I am a Camera." In "Goodbye to Berlin" (published in 1939), Isherwood writes: "I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking. Recording the man shaving at the window opposite and the woman in the kimono washing her hair. Someday, all t...