by Gregg Chadwick
Paintings and sculptures at their best possess
an uncanny ability to communicate ideas and feelings that words or other media are
hard-pressed to convey. It seems that especially in times of struggle or
unrest, art helps us connect to the personhood of others. Art creates dialogue. Dialogue promotes reflective
discussion. And reflection can lead to change.
Artists often use their creations as a sort of
reflecting device that mirrors and focuses the viewer’s attention on social and
political unrest. As Marvin Gaye sang so poignantly - “What’s going on.”
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Gregg Chadwick
Call and Echo (left), America’s Sons [From Ferguson to Baltimore] (right)
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In my solo exhibition at Audis Husar Fine Art,
a group of paintings provide their stories. The young man in Call and Echo
has been seen by many viewers as an homage to Emmett Till. Not a description of
the unspeakable violence enacted on that young man in the 1950’s, but instead
as a human being with personhood, with a face of innocence and cause.
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Gregg Chadwick Call and Echo |
In dialogue
with Call and Echo is America’s Sons (From Ferguson to Baltimore).
Inspired by the poetry of Langston Hughes, the words and advocacy of Ta-Nehisi
Coates, DeRay McKesson, and Black Lives Matter - my painting turns a spotlight
on the stories of young black men who face racial profiling, harassment and
often death.
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Gregg Chadwick
America’s Sons (From Ferguson to Baltimore) |
With millions of others, I marched on January
21, 2017 in the Women’s March. Our crowd in Los Angeles numbered around
750,000. Again, on January 20, 2018 we hit the streets - the crowd was
estimated by L.A. Mayor Garcetti at 600,000.
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Gregg Chadwick
The Future Is Woke |
In the midst of these peaceful gatherings, I
took visual and auditory notes as inspiration for a series of paintings
exploring this time of change. I took special note of the signs that were
carried by the crowd and documented them in my paintings The Future Is Woke
and Still I Rise.
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Gregg Chadwick
Still I Rise (left), The Future Is Woke (right)
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Gregg Chadwick Still I Rise |
Martin Luther King Jr.
wrote that, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a
single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all
indirectly.”
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Gregg Chadwick
The Future Is Woke (left), Scarlet Shadow (right) |
In the center of the
gallery is my large scale imagined portrait Scarlet
Shadow. In a museum or gallery, the eyes of painted portraits follow you as
you walk around the room. There is life within them. It’s the artist’s way of
drawing you in.
When a Buddhist image is
created, only when it is finished are the eyes painted in. The eyes give life
to the Buddha or the saint. As artists, we “paint in” the eyes, we paint in the
freedom, the spark that injustice threatens to take away. Artists should never
forget their own power to do this.
While in Bruges, Belgium,
I was intrigued but also taken aback by a series of small portraits of women by
the Flemish masters. In the museum these tiny portraits were
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Gregg Chadwick Scarlet Shadow |
locked away in an almost
inaccessible dark glass case. I decided to create a sort of artistic jailbreak
on my return home and set one of the women free on a grand scale. Much like a
novelist allows a character to become real in the pages of a book, Scarlet came
to life on my canvas.
On June 26, 2015
Marriage Equality became the law of the land. With hundreds of others we
celebrated on the Supreme Court steps. Later that glorious day, I chatted with President
Obama’s official photographer Pete Souza in front of the White House which was
lit up in rainbow colors in celebration of the LGBTQ community.
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Arrivals and Departures |
While we watched, the
Presidential Marine Corps unit arrived. Onboard was President Obama returning
from his moving speech at the memorial service for the church folks who were
gunned down by a young white supremacist in South Carolina. President Obama
sang Amazing Grace that day. Arrivals
and departures…
I painted Arrivals and Departures in memory of
that day and with the knowledge that the struggle for equality for all
continues.
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Platform
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Platform
is set on an elevated train station in Queens in New York City with a view of
Manhattan in the background. An almost impressionistic light fills the scene.
In this lyricism, I aim to draw viewers into the painting.
Leonard Cohen wrote in
the lyrics to his song Anthem:
“Ring the bells that
still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.”
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.”
The light gets in and
draws people deeper into my paintings.
Mulholland Blue is set on the opposite coast in the hills above Los Angeles. Standing
on Mulholland and looking down towards the glittering lights below, a blurred
trio contemplates the mystery of existence.
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Gregg Chadwick Mulholland Blue |
Does the woman in the
green dress meet her double and the memory of her lover? Or has time allowed
past, present and future to coalesce?
In a more mythic place,
a figure stands unclothed in a darkening forest in Indigo Night.
Alone in thought, layers
of indigo and true ultramarine create a dream world. I often buy tubes of genuine lapis lazuli
from the London color maker Michael Harding. Lapis lazuli is true ultramarine
ground into a crystalline powder and mixed with linseed oil on a stone mill. It
is the color blue found in Renaissance skies. Transparent layers of this lapis
mark each of my paintings in this exhibit. Sourced in Afghanistan, lapis lazuli
reflects the historical tides of trade, conquest, and conflict that ebb and
flow across this region and the globe.
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Gregg Chadwick
Indigo Night (left), October Path (right) |
October Path is part of an ongoing series of artworks about seeking peace and
justice in a world in need of harmony. The mountain peaks of Northern Thailand,
rising above the city of Chiang Mai, are often caught in an early morning sea
of fog. October Path is set in this
mist shrouded landscape. Two Buddhist monks in saffron robes appear and then
seem to merge with the air. The color of their robes is considered the color of
illumination or satori – the highest wisdom.
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Gregg Chadwick
Three Secrets |
Three Secrets brings us back into our urban world. Summer in the city. Three
young women leaving their ballet school near city hall. Secrets shared as they
walk. The afternoon light gilds their strides.
Painted images are both
timeless and immediate and can cut through the visual white noise that
surrounds us. Paintings can speak across oceans and cultures where words are
not enough.
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Gregg
Chadwick, March 2019
Notes on Technique:
Ghosts of earlier ideas
appear within my artworks and combine with other transparent moments to create
a semblance of movement, of time passing. I build a combination of shadow and
illumination in each painting to create a sensation of light emanating from the
work. I work with oil paint and usually create at least one color in each
painting from ground pigments mixed by hand with linseed oil. Linseed oil has
the propensity to grow more transparent with age and visible traces of earlier
painted marks gradually appear because of this tendency – called pentimenti. I embrace
this eventual outcome in my work and incorporate planned and unplanned
pentimenti in my process. Unless noted, all of the paintings are created on Belgian
linen.
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Gregg Chadwick
Sea of Pearls (Will Rogers) oil on panel 2018 |
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Gregg Chadwick
Tower of Song (Leonard Cohen) oil on panel 2018 |
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Gregg Chadwick
We are the Resistance (Carrie Fisher) oil on panel 2018 |
How the Light Gets In
Paintings by Gregg Chadwick
New solo exhibition of Gregg Chadwick's art
Audis Husar Fine Art in Beverly Hills.
Opening Reception - March 30, 2019
5:00 pm Benefit Film Screening - Breaking the Cycle
7:00 pm Art Exhibit and Refreshments
RSVP audishusar@icloud.com
Audis Husar Fine Art
Email: audishusar@yahoo.com
Opening Reception in Conjunction with Benefit Film Screening of Breaking the Cycle
About Arzo Yusuf's Documentary Breaking the Cycle
There are over 500,000 kids in the foster care system in America. Many foster kids are targeted by human traffickers. Los Angeles is the #1 city in the U.S. for the most kids in foster care and #3 for human trafficking. Los Angeles has more than 30,000 kids in foster care. The system is broken and our youth are at high risk of being homeless and trafficked. Breaking the Cycle addresses the issues and creates a call to action.
Reservations Available at link below:
More on the film and Arzo Yusuf in the Chronicle of Social Change
