Speed of Life

Gregg Chadwick Changes - David Bowie 41.5"x25.5"pastel on paper 2016 On January 8, 1935 Elvis Presley was born in Tupelo, Mississippi and in Brixton, London on January 8, 1947, David Bowie was born. Bowie's decades of groundbreaking music and his shapeshifting persona inspired so many of us little aliens in suburbia to fight against conformity and become our true selves. My artwork looks back on Bowie when he released his haunting song "Where Are We Now?", which is as much a painting in soft greys as it is a song. A quiet rhythm of drums and synth warp and weft with minor key piano chords and Bowie's plaintive, elegiac voice. Set in a Berlin of memory and dream, Bowie's voice and lyrics question the themes of human bondage, release, freedom, doubt, ageing, and death. Bowie lived in West Berlin between 1976 and 1979 in the Schöneberg district in a house with Iggy Pop while Brian Eno and Tony Visconti were helping record Bowie's Berlin trilogy of album...

Gregg Chadwick Jordaan Window (Coffee in Amsterdam) 25cm x 25cm oil on wood 2010 Late Light  by Philip Levine (January 10, 1928 - 2015) Rain filled the streets once a year, rising almost to door and window sills, battering walls and roofs until it cleaned away the mess we'd made. My father told me this, he told me it ran downtown and spilled into the river, which in turn emptied finally into the sea. He said this only once while I sat on the arm of his chair and stared out at the banks of gray snow melting as the March rain streaked past. All the rest of that day passed on into childhood, into nothing, or perhaps some portion hung on in a tiny corner of thought. Perhaps a clot of cinders that peppered the front yard clung to a spar of old weed or the concrete lip of the curb and worked its way back under the new growth spring brought and is a part of that yard still. Perhaps light falling on distant houses becomes those houses, hunching them down at dusk like sheep browsing on a fa...

by Gregg Chadwick    Gregg Chadwick The Station Agent (detail) 54"x54" oil on linen 2014 Private Collection, Los Angeles, California Featured at the LA Art Show 2015 -  LA Convention Center and illustrated in the catalog. January 14-18, 2015 In his biography of Apple cofounder Steve Jobs, biographer Walter Isaacson describes the unveiling of the iPhone on January 9, 2007 at Macworld in San Francisco: "Every once in a while a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything," Steve Jobs said. "Today we are introducing three revolutionary products," Jobs continued. "The first one is a widescreen iPod with touch controls. The second is a revolutionary mobile phone. The third is a breakthrough Internet communications device ... Are you getting it? These are not three separate devices, this is one device, and we are calling it the iPhone." In my paintings, I have often depicted communication devices. From phone booths in Tokyo and New York C...

  Gregg Chadwick  “Suspicion (Elvis Presley)”  36”x36” oil on linen 2016 “Gregg Chadwick takes the opposite stance in the oil-on-linen 'Elvis Presley (Suspicion).'  Here, a familiar depiction of the singer is rendered in blurry, shadowy lines, as if his memory is slowly fading and becoming the stuff of rumor and legend tending toward oblivion.” - Fredric Koeppel, The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, Tennessee Since my artwork was included in a series of Elvis themed exhibitions at the L. Ross Gallery in Memphis, Tennessee, I have been reading and re-reading Ray Connolly’s book  Being Elvis: A Lonely Life   which deftly examines Elvis’ life through the lens of Memphis in the 1940’s and 1950’s. Childhood poverty and class aspirations spurred Elvis on in a way that left no room for error in his art but left his life dangerously open to misfortune and eventual tragedy. At the Mississippi-Alabama Fair and Dairy Show in Tupelo, Mississippi on September 26, 1956, Elvi...

by Gregg Chadwick   Gregg Chadwick Arctic Fox 30”x30” oil on linen 2020 Steph Yoon Collection, Irvine, California When I was  in elementary school, I felt a great connection to the natural world and would often wander into the woods near our home to poke around in the creeks to watch tadpoles scurry about and find newts hidden under rocks. On trips to the public library, I would come home with stacks of books on animal life. There was so much to discover and I was determined to learn how to draw animals to learn more about them. I would take a sketchbook and drawing pencils to the zoo to try and capture the animals I encountered on my visits. On trips to the National Gallery in Washington DC, it was the animals in paintings by Delacroix and Rubens that drew me in. Over the years, I have continued to create artworks about animals and recently have created a series of paintings that shed light on climate change, the beauty of the natural world, and our place with other spec...

by Gregg Chadwick Gregg Chadwick Drum Taps 24"x24" oil on linen 2011  I grew up in a military family. My father was a career officer in the United States Marine Corps. Many of my friends from my school days were also military dependents. In particular, my buddy Mark Stephens embodied the ethos of duty and fidelity that the Corps presented to us.  His dad was also in the Marine Corps and fought in Vietnam as an artillery officer. Mark joined the Navy after we graduated from Lake Braddock Secondary School in Burke, Virginia. I remember him visiting me while I was a student at UCLA dressed for shore leave in his Navy dixie cup sailor cap and service uniform. Behind his welcoming bonhomie, Mark carries a fierce intellect. Befitting his future position as a history instructor at Chabot College in California, you needed to know your stuff if you were going to engage in debate with Mark. Especially military history, the US Civil War, and  Monty Python . Mark would take on our So...

by Gregg Chadwick   Gregg Chadwick Tokyo (Shibuya Crossing) 30”x22” monotype on paper 2023 Since I was a kid, I have spent a number of holiday seasons in Japan. The time from just before Christmas to just after New Year's Day is a magical time in Japan. Families gather from around the country as students and workers take time off and return to their homes for celebrations of the season. The food is marvelous, the conversations are rich, and the moments are precious. My monotype on paper "Tokyo (Shibuya Crossing)" is an artistic nod to my memories of Japan. As we move into 2023, I wish you a Happy Year of the Rabbit! And I would like to wish a warm Happy Birthday to artist and filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki who was born on this day in 1941. Pixar animator Enrico Casarosa said, "Miyazaki has this uncanny ability to add a childish sense of wonder to his stories. He’s able to make us feel like little kids again."  Gregg Chadwick Spirited Away 60"x48"oil on linen...

 by Gregg Chadwick Gregg Chadwick Berlin Diary 30”x22” ink on paper 2018 Painted as an homage to Christopher Isherwood, "Berlin Diary" depicts a fleeting moment in a city of dreams. As I created this artwork, I listened to the haunting soundtrack from the film "A Single Man" based on an Isherwood novel set in Los Angeles. Painted in ink and gouache over a monotype substrate, "Berlin Diary" combines vibrant color and movement to create a scene of mystery and possibility. Isherwood's life in Berlin from 1929 to 1933 inspired his "The Berlin Stories" which was adapted into a play, a film, and the musical  Cabaret . In 1939 he moved to the United States as war loomed in Europe and settled in Los Angeles. Isherwood's life and work helped spur on the gay rights movement. Isherwood's books include the novel "A Single Man" and his autobiography, "Christopher and His Kind." Isherwood died of cancer on January 4, 1986. Isher...