Speed of Life

WEEKEND OF DECEMBER 12-14, 2014 Gregg Chadwick The Painter ( il  miglior fabbro) 24"x30" oil on linen 2013 What role does creativity play in our lives? Is it an inner imperative that helps us forge the well-lived life? This workshop at Esalen, situated along California's rugged Big Sur coastline, engages with the notion that creativity is a “battle with the gods” in light of its Latin origins in the word  creare , the natural urge “to grow or make order of chaos." Our point of departure is that creativity is an archetypal journey with recognizable stages, which are especially helpful when we are stuck or lost in our work. For the last thirty years, Phil Cousineau has used his three-stage model — Inspiration, Perspiration, and Realization — as a guide to help writers, artists, and filmmakers to deepen and complete their work. The artist Gregg Chadwick uses his own artwork and anecdotes from his lifelong study of painters to provide an inside look at...

Thanksgiving Message from Thich Nhat Hanh Thich Nhat Hanh at UCLA photo by Gregg Chadwick   A worthy repost from four years ago: “We like the idea of being thankful to the cosmos, to everything that offers itself to us as food. That is why in Plum Village we organize a Thanksgiving Day, and we address our thanks to four objects:  first of all to our father and our mother, who gave us life; to our teacher who gave us spiritual life and helped us know how to live in the here and now; we thank our friends who support us, especially in difficult moments, and we thank every being in the animal, vegetable and mineral world for our support and maintenance. So the Buddhists also celebrate Thanksgiving, with that kind of insight. And while we celebrate Thanksgiving, we relate to everyone who is there, and this is a very good practice so that we don’t cut ourselves off from reality. The feeling of gratitude can help us to remember and to cultivate the element of compassio...

Gregg Chadwick, KC Cole, and Amy Parish on the radio promoting the reboot of Categorically Not I had the wonderful opportunity last Friday to be on the radio with the esteemed Bonobo expert Amy Parish , and the marvelous science writer KC Cole  as we discussed Compassion and what it means in art, biology and physics.  The three of us will be giving presentations at the reboot of Categorically Not  at the Santa Monica Art Studios on December 7th 2014 at 6 pm.  Should be a fantastic evening. RSVP and other information below. Feel free to share with friends. Compassion What could be more important these days than understanding compassion : How it works and when it fails, how to persuade people that being tuned to the needs of others is actually in everyone’s personal self-interest? Despite the reputation compassion has for seeming “softhearted,” its benefits are based on well-studied mathematics and neuroscience, as well as evolutionary biology. Soc...

"Scripture tells us that we shall not oppress a stranger, for we know the heart of a stranger -- we were strangers once, too. My fellow Americans, we are and always will be a nation of immigrants. We were strangers once, too." -- President Obama, November 20, 2014 Remarks of President Barack Obama Address to the Nation on Immigration The White House November 20, 2014 As Prepared for Delivery – My fellow Americans, tonight, I’d like to talk with you about immigration. For more than 200 years, our tradition of welcoming immigrants from around the world has given us a tremendous advantage over other nations. It’s kept us youthful, dynamic, and entrepreneurial. It has shaped our character as a people with limitless possibilities – people not trapped by our past, but able to remake ourselves as we choose. But today, our immigration system is broken, and everybody knows it. Families who enter our country the right way and play by the rules watch others flout the...

by Gregg Chadwick Bruce Springsteen's performance last night at The Concert for Valor was passionate, a bit gritty, and dialed in to the characters in his songs. T he words of Promised Land , Born In the USA , and surprisingly for me Dancing In the Dark cut like a knife through the hushed crowd. Springsteen seemed to embody the underlying pain of the returning warrior and the scourge of PTSD.  Springsteen stood bare on the stage with just a guitar for a compelling reason. Like a soldier returning from war and moving on without a platoon and moving on without a weapon always at hand, Springsteen courageously stood alone. T hrough his lyrics, Springsteen gave truth to the fears that many carry home from war. Yes, you are alone now. Yes, your uniform is packed away and your weapons stowed. But, there is hope. I watched friends and family come home from Vietnam as changed men. I watched many stay in the military for years and then watched them put on their uniforms for the last ti...

by Gregg Chadwick Peter Clothier's scurrilously witty new novel "The Pilgrim's Staff" explores lust, lecherousness, and love through the voices of two men from two disparate centuries. David Soames, a contemporary figurative painter living as an ex-pat in Los Angeles, receives a curious package in the mail from an English cousin. Wrapped in layers of tape and memory is the two hundred year-old journal of an English gentleman, who begins his tale with the words,"I am no Rake!" "Rake" is a wonderfully antiquated word that refers to a man caught in the snares of immorality, particularly concerning the charms of the opposite sex.  William Hogarth A Rakes's Progress:3 The Rake at the Rose Tavern 62.5x75.2  cm oil  on canvas 1734 Collection Sir John Soane's Museum , London Writing this on the 10th of November, in a coincidence worthy of Clothier's novel, I am reminded that the 18th century English painter Wi...

1. Gregg Chadwick 's painting  "To Catch A Thief" has been selected by Jeanine Hays and Bryan Mason, the husband-and-wife team behind the lifestyle brand AphroChic , to hang in the special  Helms Bakery Pop-up Home  October 10 – 12, 2014 in Culver City.  Details at:  http://aphrochic.com/2014/08/29/save-the-date-the-aphrochic-pop-up-house-at-helms-bakery/ Gregg Chadwick "To Catch A Thief'  10"x10" oil on panel 2014 2. Gregg Chadwick will have artwork in the Art Unified booth at  Worldwide Art Los Angeles  at the Los Angeles Convention Center from October16-19, 2014. More at:  https://worldwideartla.com   Gregg Chadwick "Oracle of Milan"  40"x30" oil on linen 2014  3.  Make sure to save the date for the most exciting art event of the year in Santa Monica! The 10th Anniversary Open Studios at Santa Monica Art Studios Please join us for the 10th Anniversary Open Studi...

Powerful # Ferguson Themed Cover for Sept 1 New Yorker @ NewYorker Issue

by Gregg Chadwick Holland  Cotter has a wonderful new piece in the New York Times entitled A Memory Museum .  Cotter writes,"  I’m also a curator of my memory, which carries traces of art encounters from over the years. A few of those encounters — with certain objects, books, buildings — have altered the atmosphere, changed how I see and joined a permanent collection that I regularly revisit." He then challenges us  to describe experiences with art that has changed our lives and to post them in the comment section in his article. I find this to be an enlightening question: Which works of art have changed the way you look at the world?  I answered Mr. Cotter with the following : The place of memory in the arts is so revealing. One of my first experiences with an artwork happened in Amsterdam when I was a six year old and the experience changed me forever. My father had finished his tour in Vietnam as a USMC JAG and we reunited as a family in Euro...

Please join me this Saturday, July 26, 2014 at the Sandra Lee Gallery in San Francisco as I gather with a small group to discuss my new series "Revenant" - each painting holds a mysterious story where past and present meet. The event runs from 3:30 to 6:00 pm. Also, if you haven't seen it yet, please check out the review by Jeffrey Carlson in Fine Art Connoisseur: "Gregg Chadwick's Revenant" ( link here) before my talk. More details below:

Revenant    New Paintings by Gregg Chadwick   In folk mythology, a revenant is a being or force that returns from another level of existence to haunt the living. The paintings in my new series, Revenant, carry the ghosts of their former selves. Each work goes through an open-ended series of painting sessions. Surfaces are scraped down, over painted, and layered with transparent pigments.  Opaque swaths of color are brushed into the wet surface, leaving remnants of past figures and locations, while memories and future visions surge to the surface and overwrite the image.        Current science is discovering that our earliest memories of childhood may be pushed out or overwritten like computer code by the growth of neurons during our early years, which could help explain the mysterious memory lapses, what Freud called “infantile amnesia”, in our childhood memories. Often, for me, bits of these ghostly, fragmented memories po...

Revenant New Paintings by Gregg Chadwick by Gregg Chadwick |

by Gregg Chadwick   Generosity of Eye: Art Transformed into Education from brad hall  (Full Film) Generosity of Eye: Art Transformed into Education is a must watch documentary by Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Brad Hall that documents William Louis-Dreyfus, Julia's father,  as he explains why he decided to sell his bountiful art collection to benefit the Harlem Children's Zone - an educational program in New York, created by Geoffrey Canada to break the cycle of generational poverty for the thousands of children and their families in the Harlem community.  Julia is often on screen with her father and their scenes together are rich with familial affection. As Julia interviews her father about the art that William has collected over the years and the artists who have created it, she is often overcome with emotion as she discovers the depth of her father's passion for art and for justice. Geoffrey Canada, William Louis-Dreyfus, and Julia Louis...

Today's Google doodle honors the groundbreaking environmentalist Rachel Carson, whose book  Silent Spring sounded one of the first alarms about the detrimental effect of pesticides on the eco-system. The natural world was my first love as a kid and reading Carson's work was instrumental in spurring me on to look deeply at and respect the complexities of our endangered environment. Carson's interest in conservation began with her early work as a marine biologist, which led to her award winning book, The Sea Around Us . Subsequently, nature writing provided a powerful vehicle for Carson to bring mainstream attention to the chemicals being dumped daily into our streams and rivers. Her work inspired global bans of the pesticide DDT  and helped foster the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency in the United States. I encourage you to honor Rachel Carson's legacy by spending some time today on the Audubon Society's website , the US National Park Servic...

Gregg Chadwick Buddha of the Adriatic 24"x18" oil on linen 2014 My heart breaks for the families who have lost their daughters and sons during this weekend's senseless massacre in Santa Barbara. There is so much to discuss, to argue over, to ponder. But tonight, I will continue to mourn and ask that attention be focused on the six University of California, Santa Barbara students who were stolen from us.