Speed of Life

Gregg Chadwick Heavy Mex (Sergio Arau) 12"x12" oil on panel 2018 private collection Los Angeles  (Exhibited and Sold at The Other Art Fair , Los Angeles 2018) With his music, words and images, Sergio Arau has inspired me to create a series of paintings that feature him as the main character in my painted movies. Rock Star, actor, director, screenwriter, and artist Sergio Arau has often performed while wearing gear honoring Mexico's most famous wrestling star El Santo (The Man In the Silver Mask). Known as lucha libre, Mexican wrestlers such as El Santo are defenders of the poor and vulnerable. By taking on the persona of the Luchador (wrestler), Josh Kun writes in Audiotopia: Music, Race, and America , Sergio Arau and his bands have mixed "the traditional with the contemporary, the rural with the urban, the American with the Mexican, the charro with the rockero." My painting Heavy Mex (Sergio Arau) carries Sergio Arau into a Los Angeles rock clu...

Gregg Chadwick Portrait of Yareli Arizmendi 40"x30" oil on linen 2012 I recently completed a portrait of the immensely talented actress Yareli Arizmendi. “The function of art is to renew our perceptions. The role of the artist is not to say or show what we can all speak or see, but that which we are unable to reveal” –Anais Nin Born in Mexico, raised in the United States, Yareli Arizmendi coined a word, AmeXican to describe herself: "It is a declaration of identity for the 21st century; my own account on how I prepared to wage battle in a world spilling over its human-made borders," explains Yareli.