I Just Got the Urge to Take the Day Off Thanks to Matthew Broderick and His Honda CR-V

For Super Bowl XLVI, Honda has released an homage to Ferris Bueller's Day Off starring Matthew Broderick in a reprise of his iconic role. Only, this time Ferris is a grown up film star who calls in sick.
 The truant hops in his bright red 2012 Honda CR-V and relishes a day in L.A. 


According to Honda, over two dozen movie references are hidden throughout the ad directed 
by Todd Phillips. For the Twitter inclined - Use the hashtag #dayoff and  find them all


My favorite scene is with the walrus...

Helen Frankenthaler 1928-2011

by Gregg Chadwick

Helen Frankenthaler

Mountains and Sea

7' 2 5/8" x 9' 9 1/4" oil on canvas 1952

National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

"Fashion and money, fame and power politics have played a part in all art worlds. You've just got to plug away.... I see a revival of the meaning of the word "quality"---a search for truth and beauty in lieu of stock certificates. People are most interested in what's real, what endures."

- Helen Frankenthaler (From a Conversation With Lee Rosenbaum)

Helen Frankenthaler's painting Mountains and Sea opened a painterly universe. She poured, dripped, and floated thinned oil paint directly onto an unprimed canvas, creating a stained surface in which the pigment spread into and throughout the canvas fibers. The painting is mesmerizing, like the open sea is mesmerizing. Color beckons almost like song. As viewers we take the role of Odysseus, some will remain tied to a mast - fighting the beauty and lyricism. Others, myself included, let Helen Frankenthaler's hand lead us into the unknown. 

She will be sorely missed. 

Helen Frankenthaler Painting

From a Series of Photographs by Ernst Haas Taken in 1969

Helen Frankenthaler Amidst Her Art in 1956

Photographer: Gordon Parks for LIFE Magazine

More at:
A Search for Truth and Beauty by Lee Rosenbaum

Helen Frankenthaler dies at 83; abstract painter

Seeing Through the Eyes of the Mona Lisa: Group Photo Exhibit Opening Saturday, September 10, 2011 at Arena 1 Gallery in Santa Monica, California

Symphonie des Lichts (Symphony of Light)
photo by Gregg Chadwick

Seeing Through the Eyes of the Mona Lisa
ARENA 1 Gallery

Curated by Yossi Govrin & Krista Augius

Exhibition: Sept. 10 – Oct. 1, 2011
Opening Reception with Baroque Music: Sept. 10, 6-9 p.m.

The camera is ubiquitous in contemporary life. Nearly everyone is a
photographer, most often recording the personal and mundane
but occasionally capturing news-breaking images of world historical
importance. With digital cameras, we have become instant gratification
consumers of our own portraits. What are we looking at, and what are
we seeing?

Photographers include Sabine Pearlman, Gregg Chadwick, Doni Silver Simons, Kathy Peck Leeds, Yossi Govrin, David Leeds, Krista Augius, & more...

Saturday, Sept 10 6-9pm
Exhibition: Sept 10 - Oct 1, 2011
3026 Airport Ave,Santa Monica,CA90405

More info at: 310/397-7456

Home From the Road Listening to Michael McDermott's "Carry Your Cross"

I am back after more than a month on the road. Fall in Santa Monica is crisp and reminds be of all the autumn days that have past in my life. Michael McDermott's new song "Carry Your Cross" seems to sonically embody my thoughts and dreams. Take a listen to a beautiful and haunting song.

More of Michael's poignant music at:
The Music of Michael McDermott

Peter Clothier's Review: "Monks"

Peter Clothier's new review of my work captures the soul and spirit of my art.

"There is an other-worldly quality to Gregg Chadwick's paintings, a sense of liberation from the bonds of gravity that define our physical existence. They celebrate the dedication of the monks they portray and convey some of the quiet joy that freedom from earthly needs invests in them. And yet, too, there is an elegiac tone, a kind of nostalgia for a manifestation of the purely spiritual that most of us can never hope to attain. The paintings are truly captivating in that they invite us irresistibly into their spaces and hold the attention there in their swirl of light and color, suggesting inexhaustible depths of experience for the eye to explore."
-Peter Clothier

Please read the full review here on Peter's site:
Monks by Peter Clothier

Peter Clothier has a long and distinguished career as an art writer, novelist and poet. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Artscene, ARTNews and other publications. Peter writes a daily weblog, The Buddha Diaries, and is a contributing blogger to The Huffington Post. He also hosts a monthly podcast entitled "The Art of Outrage," on ArtScene Visual Radio.

Peter Clothier's latest book is Persist.

You are Invited to the 4th Annual Santa Monica Art Walk on March 20, 2010

Gregg Chadwick
Beauty and Sadness ( 美しさと哀しみと)
Utsukushisa to Kanashimi to
57"x103" oil and collage on Japanese screen 2010

Each year the city of Santa Monica sponsors an Art Walk at the Santa Monica Airport. Often the sound of takeoffs and landings from the tarmac mask the quieter sounds of chisel on stone and brush on canvas in the old hangars lining the historic airfield. A community of artists works quietly alongside the hum of rotor blades and the roar of jet engines. Hidden from the world at large on most days, on March 20th 2010 the artists that call the airport home will open their studio doors and let the public into their creative process.

I enjoy this day greatly. The crowd of visitors is convivial and eclectic and represents the diversity that I love in Los Angeles.
Last year I missed the event as I was traveling and gathering inspiration in Japan. A number of artworks inspired by this journey to Kyoto and Tokyo will be on display.

My studio is located at the Santa Monica Art Studios Hangar
Studio #15
3026 AirportAvenue
Santa Monica, CA 90405

The event runs from 1pm to 5pm. Please call me on my cell at 415 533 1165 or email me at speedoflife@mac.com if you want to view my studio a bit early or a bit late. Hope to see you on the 20th. Children and friends of all ages are welcome.


Santa Monica Airport ArtWalk 2010
Saturday, March 20, 1:00 pm – 5:00 pm
Santa Monica Airport, Airport Avenue betw. 23rd and Bundy
Free Admission, Free parking

Yossi Govrin's Monument to Donald Douglas and His Dog, Wunderbar, Unveiled at the Santa Monica Airport

Yossi Govrin and his Bronze Sculpture of Donald Douglas and Wunderbar

Yossi Govrin spoke yesterday at the unveiling of his bronze sculpture of Donald Douglas and dog Wunderbar ."I have always been afraid of flying, " he said. "As an Israeli, all citizens serve for a time in support of the country. And as I just said I was always afraid of flight. So what did they do? They put me in the airforce. And they made me jump out of airplanes!" Yossi was safely on the ground speaking in the shadow of the Douglas DC-3 Monument which seemed to soar above him.

This aircraft was built at the Santa Monica airport in 1942 and after a long journey from the US Army Air Corps, to the Navy, to a stint in commercial aviation with Nationwide Airlines, to service with the Richfield oil company, the plane now dubbed "The Spirit of Santa Monica" is home. Echoing Yossi's days jumping out of aircraft, this DC-3 was initially used as a 28-seat paratrooper and glider tug.


Palmer, Alfred T.- photographer.
Women at work on C-47 Douglas cargo transport, Douglas Aircraft Company, Long Beach, Calif.
1942 Oct.


In the 1920's, Donald Douglas started building planes in a small workshop in the backroom of a barbershop on Pico Boulevard. By the end of World War II, Douglas Aircraft had produced more than 30,000 planes for the United States Armed Services. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, former commanding general of the United States forces in Europe fighting the Nazis, remarked "that the DC-3 was one of the four reasons the allies won the war."



Artist Yossi Govrin

My father-in-law, Ralph Heilemann, after serving with the Navy, worked at a secret weapons system in a hangar at the Santa Monica airport in the 1950's. Ralph later went on to work on the Lunar Rover for the Apollo, moon shot, program. Yesterday, watching the crowds beneath The Spirit of Santa Monica and milling around Yossi Govrin's sculpture, I thought of how the past continually mingles with the present. And that the creative spirit and heroism of those who have come before us continue to season our lives.


Gregg Chadwick
I Saw the Figure 5 in Gold (Ralph Heilemann)
16" x 8" oil on linen 2008