Speed of Life

Spotted one of my favorite local artists @greggchadwick displayed At LA Union Station pic.twitter.com/aZMV7gVSau — Theo Marshall (@ImTheoMarshall) April 14, 2023

  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...

Merry Christmas Everyone! #Japan #Trains #Caturday https://t.co/kXAkv4wOna — Gregg Chadwick (@greggchadwick) December 4, 2022

by Gregg Chadwick My Uncle Jake looms large in my life. And not only because he has the build of a defensive tackle on the San Francisco 49ers. When Jake walks into a room he fills the scene like James Gandolfini in the Sopranos. Then the stories begin.  Jolly Green Giant Jake sets the scene. Imagine he is on a covert mission during the Vietnam War. President Nixon has launched a secret bombing campaign in Cambodia and Laos. From March 18, 1969 until May 26, 1970, code name Operation Menu targeted resupply areas that the North Vietnamese and their allies the National Liberation Front and the Viet Cong were using as bases of attack against the South Vietnamese and their American allies.  Heavy B-52 bombers from the US Air Force carpet bombed the Laotian and Cambodian borders in an attempt to interdict  North Vietnamese  supply lines.  Airman Jacob J Desch (Vietnam Era Photo) Airman Jake Desch was deployed in Thailand  where the massive B-52s were stati...

by Gregg Chadwick  For the Metro project "We Are…Portraits of Metro Riders by Local Artists", I painted a portrait of artist, writer, and curator Frida Cano.  Like a steel river, Metro’s E Line connects arts institutions across Los Angeles County. Running from 7th Street in Downtown L.A. to Santa Monica, the E train begins just down Bunker Hill from LA MOCA and the Broad Museum and passes by numerous art cultural centers from the California African-American Museum, to the art gallery districts in West Adams and Culver City, to the Sawtelle Corridor, to Bergamot Station, to the 18th Street Arts Center, ending a few miles from the Ocean Park neighborhood in Santa Monica that inspired artists from Richard Diebenkorn to John Baldessari.  Frida Cano lives in Echo Park and often travels on the E Line to her art curatorial position in Santa Monica. Frida lives and breathes the concerns of our times. She writes,” As an emerging Mexican artist and curator, focused on the reevaluat...

  I reorganized my paints yesterday after fervent months in the studio painting the work for Mystery Train. Tubes of oil paint squeezed into empty twisted shells and stray caps marked only by a tell tale ring of color  were discarded. Brushes, newly cleaned, stand at attention ready for new work. A clean glass palette now sits on top of a used stack of brightly daubed surfaces. Painting trains seems to bring daily reminders of change, of process, of journeys. When a train or plane turns around for its trip back home, there is little time for introspection. Vehicles are cleaned, engines refueled, often a new crew is added - new passengers and new travels await. As Mystery Train prepares to depart San Francisco, I ask you to celebrate with me at a closing party and artist talk on February 27th at the Sandra Lee Gallery (details below) if you are in the Bay Area. I have listed below a series of events, exhibitions, press, and more that give a glimpse into the excitement around My...

Gregg Chadwick Rio Grande 30"x40" oil on linen 2015 Happy Holidays! Hope to see all my Bay Area friends at the Sandra Lee Gallery in San Francisco on Dec 12, 2015 from 4-6 pm for the Annual Holiday Group Exhibition. My new painting Rio Grande will be exhibited for the first time! Rio Grande will be on view until the New Year.