Speed of Life

  Gregg Chadwick Through Tibetan Eyes 72"x96" oil on linen 2006-2024 "In old Arabic poetry love, song, blood and travel appear as four basic desires of the human heart and the only effective means against our fear of death. Thus travel is elevated to the dignity of the elementary needs of humankind." - Czeslaw Milosz on the poetry of travel Movement, travel and pilgrimage are themes that often appear in my paintings. Travel can involve a physical relocation or it can exist in the realm of the senses. In 2006 I attended "A Gathering of Hearts Illuminating Compassion," an interfaith meeting in San Francisco. The Dalai Lama was the keynote speaker at the event. He entered the packed hall, briskly moved up the center aisle, but stopped briefly to greet an elderly Tibetan woman a few feet from where I was seated. Then the Dalai Lama suddenly spun around and, with a beatific smile, gazed deeply and directly into my eyes. I was transfixed. The moment was short, ...

by Gregg Chadwick Under the Gun   Film Poster Reflected in Window at Premiere in Beverly Hills, CA May 3, 2016 photo by Gregg Chadwick Just spent a rich afternoon in my studio with Monterey Peninsula College Art Gallery Director Melissa Pickford. Her father Rollin Pickford was an accomplished painter of the California scene and she is an accomplished curator and artist as well. We caught up on our lives, and talked about art, and memory, and time, and we also discussed the recent violent acts across the globe. Writer Anne Lamott on her Facebook page writes, "And then in recent weeks, Orlando, police shooting innocent people, and innocent police officers being shot, and now Nice.  How on Earth do we respond, when we are stunned and scared and overwhelmed, to the point of almost disbelieving?" This morning as I scan the reports trickling out from Istanbul about the failed coup in Turkey, a news alert scans across my computer screen informing me of a new shooting of p...

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...

Watch live streaming video from hhdl at livestream.com Live Video of the Dalai Lama at San Diego State Compassion Without Borders   **APRIL 19TH, 9:30-11:30am , San Diego State University. --Upholding Universal Ethics & Compassion in Challenging Times.-- To access the webstream, please visit < http://sdsu.edu/ > on the day and time of this event. **APRIL 19TH, 1:30-3:30pm , University of San Diego. --Cultivating Peace & Justice.-- H.H. Dalai Lama s talk will be streamed online at < http://www.sandiego.edu/dalailama/media/ > at 1:30pm on April 19th.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times / February 20, 2010) Hope to see you there today. The Dalai Lama and Sheryl Crow at the Gibson Amphitheatre in support of Whole Child International. More at: Dalai Lama Launches L.A. Visit And my reactions to the event will appear on Speed of Life later this week. Barack Obama met with the Dalai Lama at the White House this week. Photo: White House

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...

Today in Tibet is the start of the holiday Losar which is the Tibetan New Year. Losar (lo, year , sar, new ) began as a pre-Buddhist observance in which rituals were performed each winter to appease the spirit protectors of the mountains. After Buddhism arrived in Tibet around the 6th century BCE, the holiday merged with Buddhist traditions. Since the 13th century, Losar has traditionally fallen on the first day of the first lunar month. It is usually a time of new beginnings and great celebration. But this year, the burgundy robed Tibetan Buddhist monks have been urged via cell phone text messages to mark the day with silence and prayer rather than celebration. The Globe and Mail reports that "the movement to boycott the New Year's events is a highly organized one, originating from the Dalai Lama's home in exile in Dharamsala, in northern India." "A lot of people were killed on March 14. In our culture, we don't celebrate Losar if someone in your family died...

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...