Speed of Life

By Gregg Chadwick Gregg Chadwick Bookseller's Night oil on linen 2019      I lift three brushes wet with paint. Each brush holds its own hue- ultramarine blue, glowing amber, and a cool black. Airborne Toxic Event’s “Sometime AroundMidnight” plays on headphones tethered to my iPhone. The room spins like the song. I almost dance as each brush moves across the linen. Wet paint slurred into wet paint. I search for the light in the dark in a painterly chase through the night. I paint in a refurbished airplane hangar, the night glowing darkly through the skylights above me. Alone in a vast space, my thoughts travel back to years of painting at night: from a loft in SoHo during New York’s “Bright Lights Big City” years, to a small makeshift space in Tokyo, to a studio in a reconfigured office building on a block of San Francisco’s Market Street that Edward Hopper would have appreciated, to now in a building at an airfield where a fak...

Gregg Chadwick The Monk's Road 36"x36" oil on panel 2018 I’m very pleased to let you know that my painting  The Monk's Road  has been chosen to be featured in the New This Week Collection on Saatchi Art's homepage.   The Monk's Road  is part of an ongoing series of artworks about seeking peace and justice in a world in need of harmony. In the mountains of Northern Thailand, rising above the city of Chiang Mai, peaks are often caught in an early morning sea of fog. Written as ทะเลหมอก in Thai, this mist often covers the summit of Doi Inthanon, Thailand’s highest peak. On the mountain slope- two Buddhist stupas, often referred to as chedis in Thailand, sit to honor the monarchs of Thailand. Known as Phra Mahathat Naphamethanidon and -Nophamethanidon, the chedis were named to reflect the power of the sky and the grace of the land.  My painting "The Monk's Road" is set in this mist shrouded landscape. Three Buddhist monks in...

A photo memento from May's Venice Art Walk & Auctions at Frank Gehry's Google building. The Talented Actress Robin Tunney ( The Mentalist / Prison Break) with my painting "Museum Whispers (de Young)"  I just learned from the Venice Family Clinic - "that with the collective efforts of our participating artists, we raised more than $780,000 ($50k more than last year). We are pleased to announce that this is the most successful Venice Art Walk that we had in over a decade! "

Gregg Chadwick Mulholland Drive 30"x40" 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.

A nice video from Winona State University documenting my large, commissioned painting from 1999 - Cartographer's Dream.

Gregg Chadwick The Crossing 72"x36" oil, monotype and collage on Japanese Torinoko paper 2010 The morning of my last day on a trip to Thailand, was particularly luminous. I got up especially early and wandered through the alleys of Chiang Mai, following some monks on their serene morning pilgrimage. The light was almost incandescent and the blur of movement seemed to create paintings for me. I just needed to pay attention. To really see. I spent the time on the short flight to Bangkok watching a kind of film playing in my mind of saffron robes scintillating in the morning mist. Later, as I waited for my connecting flight to San Francisco, I caught sight of a different clip on a television monitor as the second plane crashed into the World Trade Center. It was September 11, 2001. I felt the horror of the crowd as we watched in disbelief. I longed for home and my son. Weeks later when finally back in my studio, the juxtaposition of the monks’ serenity in Thailand that day and...

"Pompeii, especially, with its grand murals and flourishing gardens haunted by the dark shadow of Vesuvius, has always suggested uncomfortable parallels with our contemporary world, especially here in Southern California, where the sunlit life also turns out to have dark shadows in which failure and death lurk at the edge of consciousness. Now, in these times, we have even closer parallels with those ancient, beautiful, affluent people living the good life on the verge of annihilation." —Eleanor Antin on Classical Frieze Eleanor Antin The Artist's Studio from "The Last Days of Pompeii," 2001 (detail) chromogenic print 46 5/6 x 58 5/8 inches Eleanor Antin The Tree from "The Last Days of Pompei," 2001 chromogenic print 60 x 48 inches Eleanor Antin's film and photo work, Classical Frieze , re-imagines Pompeii and the classical Roman world as if seen through the eyes of a contemporary filmmaker paying homage to the sword and sandal film epics of t...

Revolution '09 موج سبز , originally uploaded by greggchadwick . Gregg Chadwick Revolution '09 موج سبز 48"x36" oil on linen 2009 (in progress - the revolution and the painting) An Iranian citizen writes from Tehran: (from Andrew Sullivan) "I remember September 11, 2001. I remember watching TV all day worried and sad. I remember holding candlelight vigils with my friends for the victims. Then George W. Bush went on to declare us as one of the “Axis of Evil.” I remember asking myself, “Why?” Not a single one of the terrorists was Iranian, and I wondered why he didn’t bother to make a distinction between the government and the people. In fact, in all of the Middle East I don’t think there is a more pro-American nation than Iran, but no one made such a distinction. Consequently, the Iranian people were viewed with an aura of suspicion in every airport and embassy around the world for the rest of the Bush administration." "But all of that unfounded ...

Gregg Chadwick A Delphic Dream 36"x18" oil on linen 2009 "As I entered the still bowl, bathed now in marble light, I came to that spot in the dead center where the faintest whisper rises like a glad bird and vanishes over the shoulder of the low hill, as the light of a clear day recedes before the black of night...." - Henry Miller, The Colossus of Marousi "For the initiated, there is unabashed wonder and humbleness before the sacred. It's as if you've surprised the secret lurking at the heart of the world." - Phil Cousineau, The Art of Pilgrimage

As the Beijing Olympics nears its finale, I can't help but think about the conflict between the Olympic ideal and the Chinese state sponsored attempts to make China appear good and powerful at all costs. It seems that at least one of the star Chinese gymnasts has not yet reached the needed Olympic competition age of sixteen and has submitted a state-forged passport with an inaccurate date of birth to the International Olympic Committee. And most of all, the question of Tibet hangs over Beijing like the smog that chokes the athletes lungs. It appears that the Chinese government has blocked the Apple i-tunes site for the past week to keep the Chinese people from hearing and purchasing the benefit album Songs for Tibet. It seems that many of the athletes from around the world had downloaded the album in the Olympic village and were listening to what has become a top rated i-tunes download around the world. The album is a benefit for the Art of Peace Foundation. Gregg Chadwick Throug...