Speed of Life

"Labor is prior to, and independent of, capital. Capital is only the fruit of labor, and could never have existed if labor had not first existed. Labor is the superior of capital, and deserves much the higher consideration.“ — Republican President Abraham Lincoln,  Message to Congress, December 3, 1861 Labor Day, 1942 by Charles Henry Alston,  the first African American supervisor for the WPA Federal Art Project Today, in honor of Labor Day in the United States,  Denise  Oliver Velez posted a moving tribute to  work and workers  on the  Daily Kos.   Inspired by the words, images and music that Velez put together, I have spent much of this Labor Day in deep consideration of the struggle and sacrifice of the brave laborers who worked together to build this country.  Peter Clothier on his site,  Vote Obama 2012 , has also been considering the meaning of this holiday. Clothier writes: "How much thought, I wonder,...

E N T E R " Echoing layered fragments from the past," Gregg Chadwick's paintings resemble a "fragile palimpsest," offering "under images that bring forth mysterious fragments" from his subconscious. Please Click Enter & Wander Through An Evocative Feature on the Art of Gregg Chadwick Curated by Stuart Vail and Joanne Warfield " We need to embrace the beauty of Art to grace our lives and hope that the fruit of the Muses will prevail. I maintain that our salvation may lie in the hands of those who embrace beauty, those in whose works celebrate the majesty and purity of life itself." — Stuart Vail, Editor

Gregg Chadwick La Vita Trasparente (The Transparent Life) 48"x36" oil on linen 2012 Inspired by the poem La Vita Trasparente by Luigi Fontanella: LA VITA TRASPARENTE Luigi Fontanella Apre la città le sue strade, corrono biciclette senza persone, alla finestra s'affaccia e sparisce un volto di donna, le vetrine offrono sessi per ogni stagione, giro di vite: balla una coppia agile e magra nella piazza deserta, la corsa degli uomini, agita chiome il bosco in controluce, passi su foglie e solchi di fango duro, viale d'autunno carrozza regale pioggia di rugiada e di carta: la vita trasparente. The Transparent Life by Luigi Fontanella (translation by W.S. di Piero) the city opens its streets, bicycles go by riderless, a woman's face in a window appears then vanishes, shop windows offer fetishes for every season, lives turning, a slender agile couple dances in the deserted piazza, the race men run, the hairy woods shivering...

Gregg Chadwick Barcarole 14"x14" oil on linen 2012

Gregg Chadwick Mulholland Drive 30"x40" oil on linen 2012

Gregg Chadwick Il Poeta di Milano (The Poet of Milan) 24"x18" oil on linen 2012

Gregg Chadwick La Notte 14"x11" oil on linen 2012 La Notte,  my latest painting, was begun shortly after I returned from my latest excursion to Venice, Italy.  Venice, poised between sea and land, is a place where light, shade, color, and reflection merge and recombine in the city's watery environment. In this mirrored world, past and present seem to coexist. History’s shadows slide in and out of darkened alleys and slip along narrow canals. The color and light found in the artworks of the Venetian painters Bellini, Carpaccio, Giorgione, Titian, Tintoretto, Veronese, and Tiepolo, seen up close in the city of their creation, is always revelatory. These artist's artworks glow like light upon water. This effect of reflected, sparkling light bouncing off canals, is called gibigiane in Venetian dialect. The liquid nature of transparent oils glowing from within, as if light lived within the pigment, seems to fix this quixotic glow onto canvas.

I am honored to announce that my artwork is now represented in San Francisco and the Bay Area by the  Sandra Lee Gallery 251 Post Street, Suite 310 San Francisco, CA 94108 tel: 415.291.8000 art@sandraleegallery.com Four of my latest paintings are hanging in the gallery, including my most recent artwork - West Village Reader (see below). Please stop in to view the art and say hello to Sandra Lee. Gregg Chadwick West Village Reader 14"x11" oil on linen 2012

My paintings are featured in the latest edition of the wonderful literary magazine -Umbrella Factory. My painting Red in Rain graces the cover and more works are inside. Please check out the issue. It is stunning! View Umbrella Factory at - UmbrellaFactoryMagazine.com @ greggchadwick And we love you! Thanks for making our issue look so darned good. — Umbrella Factory (@ufmagazine) June 21, 2012 I pity the fools who have not checked-out the art by @ greggchadwick in our new issue. — Umbrella Factory (@ufmagazine) June 19, 2012

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.

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...

Gregg Chadwick The Wound-Dresser (Walt Whitman, Washington D.C., US Civil War, 1865) 30” X 24” oil on linen 2011 "The eyes transcend the medium." -R.B. Morris (Poet, Musician, Songwriter)    Walt Whitman's poetry is a continual source of inspiration for me. Whitman's life story is also deeply moving. In December 1862 Walt Whitman saw the name of his brother George, a Union soldier in the 51st New York Infantry, listed among the wounded from the battle of Fredericksburg. Whitman rushed from Brooklyn to the Washington D.C. area to search the hospitals and encampments for his brother. During this time Walt Whitman gave witness to the wounds of warfare by listening gently to the injured soldiers as they told their tales of battle.   Whitman often spent time with soldiers recovering from their injuries in the Patent Office Building (now home to the National Portrait Gallery and Smithsonian American Art Museum), which had been converted into a hospital for...

We were not meant to survive. We were meant to live. - W.S. Merwin Gregg Chadwick A Balance of Shadows 72”x96” oil on linen A Balance of Shadows was begun in 2004 as a visual poem reflecting the tensions of our era. Today, May 24, 2012, I laid a thin transparent layer of lapis lazuli across a section of the sky. Sourced in Afghanistan, this precious stone, when ground into pigment, creates a radiant blue that has been considered auspicious in both east and west. The word depicted in Japanese script in the upper left section of the painting is satori .  The word satori is a Japanese Buddhist term for enlightenment or "understanding". In the Zen Buddhist tradition, satori refers to the experience of kensho . Kensho when used in Zen traditions refers to "seeing into one's true nature." Ken means "seeing," sho means "nature" or "essence." Satori and kensho are commonly translated as enlightenment, a word...

by Gregg Chadwick In response to  Spring for Music 's Round Two query in  the 2012 Great Blogger Challenge : We live in an aggressively visual age; images dominate the popular culture.  But which art form has the most to say about contemporary culture, and why? Tokyo Streets photo by Gregg Chadwick  The dense visual language of the Tokyo cityscape immediately came to mind when I considered Spring for Music's second query in the 2012 Great Blogger Challenge. The visual cacophony of signs and images that line the streets of the city's shopping districts provide a visual metaphor for the images that threaten to overload us each day as we turn on our computers and televisions. But do images themselves say more than other art forms about contemporary culture? The uncertainty and ambiguity often found in our 21st century lives calls for a rich cultural exploration that images may only hint at.  ...