Speed of Life

CROSS CURRENTS New Works by Los Angeles Artists  Saatchi Art, the world's leading online gallery, presents new works in celebration of LA's first citywide Public Art Biennial, Current: LA. July 21 through September 29, 2016 1655 26th Street Santa Monica, CA 90404 CROSS CURRENTS is a new exhibition on view at Saatchi Art in Santa Monica. Curated by Katherine Henning, Associate Curator, and Jessica McQueen, Assistant Curator, the exhibition continues Saatchi Art's series of shows around the world. The exhibition highlights the work of 14 emerging artists represented by Saatchi Art, the world’s leading online gallery: Gregg Chadwick, Fabio Coruzzi, Charlotte Evans, Art van Kraft, Chase Langford, Koen Lybaert, Lola Mitchell, Harry Moody, Relja Penezic, Kelly Puissegur, Stephen Rowe, Erin Tengquist, Dean West, and Naomi White. The exhibition is on view from July 21 through September 29, 2016 at Saatchi Art, located at 1655 26th Street, Santa Monica, CA. Gall...

by Gregg Chadwick Gregg Chadwick Salish Sea 30"x24" oil on linen 2014  Two years ago on a technicolor blue day, I stood on the deck of the Wenatchee ferry cutting through the choppy sea from Seattle to Bainbridge Island. The vessel was named for the Wenatchi people who originally lived in the shadow of the Columbia and Wenatchee Rivers in Eastern Washington State. We are riding on a ship of memory. In the Yakama language,  w enatchi  means "river flowing from canyon." The Wenatchee River was home to a vibrant salmon run prior to the damming of the Columbia River which impeded the salmon's journey. Like the fish, the Wenatchi tribe was also blocked from its ancestral waterways as the US government rounded up the Native Americans in Washington State and collected them in reservations far from their native lands.  I often think about the rivers, lakes, towns and cities we have named after the original Americans. The absence of most of their cu...

by Gregg Chadwick Gregg Chadwick Ponte di Castelvecchio (Verona) 48"x36" oil on linen 2016 Last year, perched above a Renaissance era bridge in Verona, Italy, I watched a light rainfall and a swollen river rush 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 n...