Speed of Life

Gregg Chadwick Steinbeck Sky 18" x 24" oil on linen 2014 Writer John Steinbeck was born on this day in 1902 in Salinas, California. My parents moved to the Monterey Bay when I was a college student at UCLA and over the years I have made innumerable trips to the area from Southern California or San Francisco depending on where I was living at the time. When the sun sets on a road trip in California, the sky seems to erupt into a momentary monument to time itself. While driving through Steinbeck's hometown of Salinas, California; I am often struck by the immense color of the evening sky and know I have to get my impressions down on canvas. "Steinbeck Sky" is an homage to these moments. In the summer after my first year at UCLA, I steeped myself in John Steinbeck novels and the paintings of Edward Hopper. My soundtrack was Bruce Springsteen's fourth album Darkness on the Edge of Town , which to me sounded like a distillation of Steinbeck, Hopper and Woody Guthr...

  by Gregg Chadwick 44 years ago today, Bruce  Springsteen's  fourth album  Darkness on the Edge of Town was released. The wide open romanticism of Born to Run was missing from this new album. Instead we were greeted with a powerful mix of  Steinbeck, Hopper, Woody Guthrie, and Springsteen's unleashed guitar. Bruce's new guitar sound was both lyrical and powerful. I put that sound into my artistic toolbox and pull it out when I need to. In the opening track Badlands, Springsteen howls that "It ain't no sin to be glad your alive." I've held on to that line as a call to action ever since.  Gregg Chadwick Love In Vain (Castro - San Francisco) 16"x20"oil on linen 2016 I had just finished my freshman year at UCLA and  this was my first summer on the Monterey Bay in central California. The pace of life was so much slower than Los Angeles or Washington DC and I found time for study and reflection in the hours after my temp job finished. I would go fo...