Cross Currents: Ponte di Castelvecchio - Water and the Image of Time
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...