Monday, December 25, 2023
Thursday, December 21, 2023
Happy Winter Solstice!
On the #WinterSolstice, we're dreaming of the first snow ❄️
— Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (@mfaboston) December 21, 2023
πΌ️: #ChildeHassam, "Charles River and Beacon Hill" (about 1892), oil on canvas pic.twitter.com/0gcHx9gnx1
Today is the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere & the first day of winter! What causes our planet’s shift in seasons? Its tilt. Today, Earth’s Northern Hemisphere is at its most-tilted away from the Sun. pic.twitter.com/cFJs2ZNGUo
— American Museum of Natural History (@AMNH) December 21, 2023
Saturday, June 17, 2023
Happy Juneteenth 2023!
Juneteenth as a federal holiday is meant to breathe new life into the very essence of America.
— President Biden (@POTUS) June 17, 2023
To make sure all Americans feel the power of this day and the progress we can make for our country.
Earlier this week, I felt that power at the White House. pic.twitter.com/Ogo6SBvZBA
Six Art-Filled Ways to Celebrate Juneteenth in New York City https://t.co/9gF54bqlr0 via @hyperallergic
— Gregg Chadwick πΊπ¦ π§ (@greggchadwick) June 17, 2023
Sunday, April 02, 2023
Bruce Springsteen & E Street Band - Jungleland | New York City 2023
Thursday, March 09, 2023
Get Ready for Sunday, March 19, 2023
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Art At The Airport is made possible by Art of Recovery, an initiative of Santa Monica Cultural Affairs, santamonica.gov/arts/artofrecovery. To learn about upcoming Art At The Airport events, visit: https://www.artattheairport.org/
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#ArtOfRecovery #ArtAtTheAirport #CityOfSantaMonica #SantaMonicaArtsCommunity #SantaMonicaArtScene #BuyArtFromArtists #SupportLocalArtists #SantaMonicaArtCollective #SantaMonicaCulturalAffairs #artistssupportingartists
Sunday, January 01, 2023
First Dream, First Sale 2023
by Gregg Chadwick
%20%2048%E2%80%9Dx36%E2%80%9D%20oil%20on%20linen%202016.jpg "Ponte del Castelvecchio")
Gregg Chadwick
Ponte del Castelvecchio (Verona)
48"x36"oil on linen
In Japan the first dreams of the New Year, hatsu-yume εε€’, traditionally provide markers for the dreamer's upcoming year. In that spirit, perhaps the first artwork sold in a new year provides inspiration for the months to come. My painting Ponte del Castelvecchio (Verona) is the first sale of 2023. On this first day of the new year, I am busy packing up my Verona painting for shipment to its new home.
I think back to the genesis of the painting. I was perched above a Renaissance era bridge in Verona watching a light rainfall and the swollen river rushing 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.
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.
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
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
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 much larger 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. 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.
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 my painting, the splashes of red and orange that mark the umbrellas swiftly carried across the bridge find their antecedent in Soccol and Roeg’s film. Water and time.
Saturday, December 31, 2022
Happy New Year! On to 2023
It’s raining this New Year’s Eve in Santa Monica. I’m listening to a recording of a 10,000-member choir in Japan singing “Ode to Joy” in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Enthusiasm for Beethoven is particularly strong in Japan. Every year in December, singers gather in a concert hall in Osaka to sing the final chorus from Beethoven's Ninth.
Again, my thoughts trace a circuit from this moment back to an earlier New Year in Japan as 1989 rolled into 1990. I was in Tokyo following the spirit and artworks of Ando Hiroshige. That winter in Japan, I clutched a large volume by Henry D. Smith II and Amy G. Poster on Hiroshige’s One Hundred Famous Views of Edo and trekked on rail, foot and car across the historic core of what was Edo era Tokyo. Sponsored by the Nippon Seiyu-Kai's 30th Anniversary Award, I endeavored to create a series of new paintings inspired by Hiroshige’s woodcuts. Time, place, memory, mystery and lore all mixed in my artworks.
Today @nortonsimon posted a photo of one of the most mysterious images from Hiroshige's One Hundred Famous Views of Edo. Alison Baldassano from the Brooklyn Museum wrote about this artwork, "People aren’t the only beings who gather together for special celebrations on the night before a new year dawns. In this woodblock print by Hiroshige, foxes come together on New Year’s Eve to receive directions for the upcoming year and emit ghostly flames, the size of which helps predict the next year’s crop…. And, as the foxes could say in the morning, ζγγΎγγ¦γγγ§γ¨γγγγγΎγ (akemashite omedetou gozaimasu) or #HappyNewYear!"
#art #NewYear #NYC #japan