Speed of Life

by Gregg Chadwick Turn the nightly news on today, or scan the latest headlines on your iPhone, and it would seem that the world grows uglier each day. Eleven years ago,  I wrote  about my search for images of peace. I  hearken  back to those thoughts prompted by a memory  of a time in Perth, Australia  reading  an art review concerning an exhibition about non-violence. The title of the review was "How do you paint peace?" Prompted by these ongoing concerns, I have been creating a new series of paintings using ideas of New Urbanism - Los Angeles in particular with peace as a subtext. What the amazing writer, actor, and teacher Claudette Sutherland, in my studio yesterday evening, called "Love Songs to the City."  Gregg Chadwick Third L.A. (for Christopher Hawthorne) 30"x24" oil on linen 2015 Three books published in the last few years should be on every peacemaker's bookshelf: Steven Pinker's  The Better Angels of Our N...

"America, the first real democracy in history, was a product of Enlightenment values - critical intelligence, tolerance, respect for evidence, a regard for the secular sciences. Though the founders differed on many things, they shared these values of what was then modernity. They addressed "a candid world," as they wrote in the Declaration of Independence, out of "a decent respect for the opinions of mankind." Respect for evidence seems not to pertain any more, because a poll taken just before the elections showed that 75 percent of Mr. Bush's supporters believe Iraq either worked closely with Al Qaeda or was directly involved in the attacks of 9/11.  The secular states of modern Europe do not understand the fundamentalism of the American electorate. It is not what they had experienced from this country in the past. In fact, we now resemble those nations less than we do our putative enemies."  -Garry Wills, adjunct professor of history at Northw...