Speed of Life

 by Gregg Chadwick Gregg Chadwick Ponte del Castelvecchio (Verona) 48"x36"oil on linen   In Japan the first dreams of the New Year, hatsu-yume 初夢, 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 th...

  Gregg Chadwick New York Stories (Five Minutes to Midnight) 30"x 40" oil on linen  Happy New Year! 明けましておめでとうございます Akemashite Omedetou Gozaimasu In my painting "New York Stories" it’s five minutes to midnight. Waiting for 2022 to move into 2023 like the hands of a clock spinning into the next hour, figures move around the iconic Grand Central clock like foxes huddling beneath a tree in Andō Hiroshige's "New Year's Eve Foxfires at the Changing Tree, Ōji" 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. Gregg Chadwick Passing View of Shohei Bridge  30"x24" oil on linen 1990 Again , my thoughts trace a circuit from this moment back to an earlier New Yea...

 by Gregg Chadwick Gregg Chadwick Wings of Desire 30"x24"oil on linen 2019 Theresa Brown Collection, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania As 2021 shifts to 2022, I think of years passing like film titles shifting on theater marquees. With that thought, on the day we lost Betty White at 99, I am posting my painting "Wings of Desire". In the spirit of writers Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Salman Rushdie, a bit of magical realism often finds its way into my paintings. In memory of Bruno Ganz and in homage to one of my favorite films by Wim Wenders, my oil on linen painting "Wings of Desire" depicts one of my favorite angels hovering by the Aero Theatre in Santa Monica. Deep thanks  @theresabrownrn2021  for loving the film and my painting so much that you had to purchase it! Happy New Year Folks! The painting is featured in  @art_squat  magazine's new interview with me in their 3rd Issue http://www.art-squat.com/articles3/Gregg_Chadwick/index.php #art   #WimWenders   #Au...

by Gregg Chadwick Happy New Year 2017! It’s raining this New Year’s Eve in Santa Monica. The haunting voice of Gil Scott-Heron singing  Winter In America  fills our living room. 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. Gregg Chadwick Passing View of Shohei Bridge  30"x24" oil on linen 1990  Today, on the Brooklyn museum’s Tumblr page, Alison Baldassano posted a phot...