Speed of Life

I am honored to announce the publication of my latest collaboration with the author Phil Cousineau:   The Painted Word .  Sixty-three of my artworks are included in this new volume.  Book Tour Dates - All Are Welcome & All Events are Free. I will bring a group of the artworks included in the book to each event listed below: In Northern California: Tomorrow:  Phil Cousineau and Gregg Chadwick on  The Painted Word at Book Passage   51 Tamal Vista Blvd | Corte Madera, California Wednesday, September 12, 2012, 7:00 PM (Art by Gregg Chadwick Courtesy The Sandra Lee Gallery, San Francisco) Thursday:  Phil Cousineau and Gregg Chadwick on  The Painted Word   City Lights Booksellers | 261 Columbus Avenue | San Francisco, California Thursday, September 13, 2012, 7:00 PM (Art by Gregg Chadwick Courtesy The Sandra Lee Gallery, San Francisco) In Southern California: Phil Cousineau and Gregg Chadwick on...

Ray Bradbury Santa Monica, California 2009 Photo by Gregg Chadwick The author Ray Bradbury died yesterday in Los Angeles. He was 91.  Gerald Jonas in t he New York Times describes Bradbury as " a master of science fiction whose lyrical evocations of the future reflected both the optimism and the anxieties of his own postwar America." After atomic weapons obliterated the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, fears that science had become more of a threat than a boon found their way into science fiction films and stories that depicted a dystopian future. Bradbury used the magic of stories to create literary works that used this threat as a source of tension in works that often left an impression of hope rather than horror. For the book loving Bradbury, his novel  Fahrenheit 451  - whose title refers to the temperature at which paper ignites - seems to be the most harrowing of his works. A future America that would burn books and thus control the river of ideas...

by Gregg Chadwick “Dear Mr. Sendak,  How much does it cost to get to where the wild things are? If it is not expensive, my sister and I would like to spend the summer there.”  -From a letter sent by an eight year old reader to Maurice Sendak Maurice Sendak   Where the Wild Things Are Pen and ink and watercolor on paper  1963 Maurice Sendak was an artist in love with the world and with things that go bump in the night. Sendak looked deeply at the world around him. His vision included the visible nature of  our existence and the invisible, but no less real, world of dreams. Sendak's beautifully crafted artworks for his books began with simple pencil sketches that were then enlarged and fleshed out with pen and ink which was then layered with glowing watercolor washes.  The finished paintings on paper reflect what Dave Eggers described in a Vanity Fair article on Sendak as the "unhinged and chiaroscuro subconscious of a child." Sendak's...

by Gregg Chadwick Peter Clothier's Mind Work explores the history and spiritual dimensions of his inspiring life. Clothier is known for insightful writing on the arts and artists which adds luminosity to the events depicted in  Mind Work . The volume delves deeply into a life well lived and inspires us to consider our own lives in a spirit of humility and acceptance.   The book is  structured into a series of essays that reflect an admiration for Montaigne's writings. In this spirit, each chapter of  Mind Work  dwells upon a singular idea and illuminates this idea with episodes drawn from Clothier's experiences.   Mind Work  deftly weaves Peter's family history into essays rich with metaphysical questioning. Looming behind much of Clothier's life is the recurring struggle to both live up to his father's dreams for him and to overcome them. In one pivotal chapter, Clothier and his wife Ellie encounter, for the first time, Michelangelo's sculp...

by Gregg Chadwick Lady Gaga Poses For Tony Bennett in His Atelier photo and concept by Annie Leibovitz for Vanity Fair During Lady Gaga's entertaining Thanksgiving special she joked about her brief gig as a life model for singer and visual artist Tony Bennett. Gaga recounted: "I walked in and said, 'Well, Tony, here we are,' and I dropped my robe and I got into position. I felt shy and thought, 'It's Tony Bennett. Why am I naked?" Lady Gaga had come face to face with what Kathleen Rooney describes as the “spine-tingling combination of power and vulnerability, submission and dominance” of nude modeling in her marvelous book  Live Nude Girl : My Life As An Object. Rooney's book   provides an introspective look at the history and challenges of art modeling from the model's point of view. Rooney's meditative prose leads us to a point of connection between muse and artist. Why after centuries of images in charcoal, paint, stone and ...

I am pleased to announce that the catalog for my exhibition Theater of Memory at Monterey Peninsula College is now available in a digital format in the iTunes Bookstore. Please click on the iBookstore Logo for more info.

By Gregg Chadwick Are we making monsters in university laboratories? How much is a life worth? Where does science start and religion end? When it comes to contemporary advances in science, the general public can feel lost on the margins as new discoveries whizz past like speeding rockets on the Bonneville Salt Flats. As humans we are primed to distrust or misunderstand unfamiliar things or states of being. Is it any wonder that popular culture since the dawn of the modern era is full of out of control scientific experimentation such as that found in Mary Shelley's cautionary novel Frankenstein ? Fear of the unknown may often be polarizing. Knowledge may be liberating. Jonathan Moreno's new book, The Body Politic: The Battle Over Science in America , shines a light on the issues surrounding contemporary scientific explorations. Moreno focuses on the current place of science and politics in the United States, yet Moreno also deftly explores through a long lens, the philosoph...

Paul Georges The Studio 120”x79 1/2” oil on canvas 1965 The Whitney Museum Collection, New York Courtesy Paul Georges Estate Michael Stein's new novel "The Rape of the Muse" ponders the worth of art and the place of beauty in our contemporary society. Stein's re-imagining of painter Paul Georges' trial for libel in 1980 updates the events to the 21st century and fleshes out the characters with a post September 11th ennui. When Georges' trial took place in 1980, the Neo-Expressionist boom in art was just beginning. Emotional, brightly colored paintings using the figure as a theme filled galleries in New York and Europe. In that time Paul Georges’ artwork was included in exhibitions at the Whitney Museum in New York, the Rose Art Museum at Brandeis, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. But still, Georges was an outsider looking in on an art world that often considered narrative painting to be atavistic at best - reactionary at worst. Paul Georges ...

Gregg Chadwick Stilled Life (Akihabara) 30"x22" monotype on paper 2011 TOWN OF CATS (Excerpt from 1Q84) by Haruki Murakami At Koenji Station, Tengo boarded the Chuo Line inbound rapid-service train. The car was empty. He had nothing planned that day. Wherever he went and whatever he did (or didn’t do) was entirely up to him. It was ten o’clock on a windless summer morning, and the sun was beating down. The train passed Shinjuku, Yotsuya, Ochanomizu, and arrived at Tokyo Central Station, the end of the line. Everyone got off, and Tengo followed suit. Then he sat on a bench and gave some thought to where he should go. “I can go anywhere I decide to,” he told himself. “It looks as if it’s going to be a hot day. I could go to the seashore.” He raised his head and studied the platform guide... Continue reading in The New Yorker at: Excerpt from Haruki Murakami's Upcoming Novel 1Q84 Above: The Cover for Haruki Murakami's New Novel 1Q84: 1. Jacket 2. Binding...

by Gregg Chadwick In his first work of fiction,  The Wandering Falcon , Jamil Ahmad depicts a world caught between timeless paths of migration and geo-political modernity. Ahmad knits together a series of short stories that cover the life arc of one young man, Tor Baz - the wandering falcon of the title, as he journeys from infancy to manhood. Inspired by his time as a civil service worker in the tribal areas of Pakistan, Ahmad writes of a world governed by clan and custom. During his time as a powerful emissary of the Pakistani government under the tribal region's frontier governing system, Jamil Ahmad simultaneously served as politician, police chief, judge, jury and executioner. Bits of this personal history are woven within the stories, including hints of Jamil's wife's German heritage. Environmentalist and activist Helga Ahmad was instrumental in encouraging her husband Jamil to move from  halting first attempts at poetry to richly crafted stories of people, p...

I enjoy the writing of Adam Gopnik. His current piece in the New Yorker, How the Internet Gets Inside Us , delves into the spaces between man and machines: between the internet and inner self. Today the New Yorker hosted a chat with Adam Gopnik. I found the conversation to be fascinating and have archived it below. The New Yorker: Adam Gopnik will be joining us shortly to discuss the Internet. For now, please submit your questions. 2:00 Adam Gopnik : Hey everyone. Glad to be here for the slightly ironic-meta purpose of carrying on a conversation on the internet about the uses of conversations on the internet. Let me start taking questions. A.G. 2:00 [Comment From Doug] When did you first start using the Web? Were you a late or early adopter? 2:01 Adam Gopnik :: Early or late? Somewhere in between I suppose. I went on e-mail in the mid nineties while living in Paris-- my life is now composed of nothing but e-mail and caffiene-- but only really started being addicted as the world did, in...