Through Tibetan Eyes

 

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, but to me it felt as if all time collapsed within that point. For that moment, it seemed as if the Dalai Lama yearned to see with my eyes as I, in turn, learned to see through his. I have been working on this painting ever since to put my experience of that moment of empathy and connection down on canvas.

Thinking About Peace and Painting With Melissa Pickford

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 police officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. This summer of discontent continues to boil. But Anne Lamott reminds us,"What is true is that the world has always been this way, people have always been this way, grace always bats last, it just does--" 

As we consider recent events, three books published in the last few years should be on every peacemaker's bookshelf: Steven Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, Michael Shermer's The Moral Arc: How Science Makes Us Better People, and the Dalai Lama's Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World. These three volumes begin with the premise that global violence on an historical timeline is not increasing and that humanity is generally good. As Melissa and I talked about - turn the nightly news on, or scan the latest headlines on your iPhone, and it would seem that the world grows uglier each day. Pinker's book successfully argues that the past was a much more brutal time. Shermer argues that because of the Enlightenment, thinkers consciously applied the methods of science to morally solve social struggles and that again, on an historical timeline, humanity is in the most moral period in history. The Dalai Lama makes it clear in Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World that an individual does not have to be religious to be ethical. Love and compassion are necessities for living. Compassion expresses deep sensitivity to the sufferings of others and a fierce drive to help alleviate those sufferings. Compassion is also the realization that we - human beings, animals, and the earth itself - are all interconnected.

How do we respond to our summer of discontent with compassion? Anne Lamott writes:

"I know that we MUST respond. We must respond with a show of force equal to the violence and tragedies, with love force. Mercy force. Un-negotiated compassion force. Crazy care-giving to the poor and suffering, including ourselves."

And we must continue to paint, to write, to dance, to sing. To value creation over destruction.
We must continue to fight for justice and to celebrate life. 

Love Songs to the City

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 Nature, Michael Shermer's The Moral Arc, and the Dalai Lama's Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World. These three volumes begin with the premise that global violence on an historical timeline is not getting worse and that humanity is generally good. 

Gregg Chadwick
Thursday's Child
8"x6" oil on panel 2015

 Pinker's book successfully argues that the past was a much more brutal time. “The decline of violence may be the most significant and least appreciated development in the history of our species,” Pinker writes. As Elizabeth Kolbert notes in The New Yorker,"Another key development in Pinker’s narrative is the rise of cities, which in turn demanded stricter codes of conduct." This thought in Pinker's work connects to my painterly exploration of our new era in Los Angeles.  As the architecture writer for the Los Angeles Times explains - there have been three distinct iterations of modern L.A.:

"The First Los Angeles, stretching roughly from the city’s first population boom in the 1880s through 1940, a city growing at an exponential pace built a major transit network and innovative civic architecture.
In the Second Los Angeles, covering the period from 1940 to the turn of the millennium, we pursued a hugely ambitious experiment in building suburbia –- a privatized, car-dominated landscape –- at a metropolitan scale.
Now we are on the cusp of a new era. In a series of six public events, some on the Occidental College campus and others elsewhere, the Third Los Angeles Project will explore and explain this new city. "

 Shermer argues that because of the Enlightenment, thinkers consciously applied the methods of science to morally solve social struggles and that again, on an historical timeline, humanity is in the most moral period in history. 

The Dalai Lama makes it clear in Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World that an individual does not have to be religious to be ethical. Love and compassion are necessities for living. Compassion expresses deep sensitivity to the sufferings of others and a fierce drive to help alleviate those sufferings. Compassion is also the realization that we - human beings, animals, and the earth itself - are all interconnected.

Again I ask you: 
How would you paint peace? 

How would you create the idea of peace in your music? In your writing? In your life?

Live Video of the Dalai Lama at San Diego State

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.

The Dalai Lama Visits Los Angeles

(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

Invitation to My Opening February 18, 2010 at the LOOK Gallery in Los Angeles

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 the traumatic explosions on the other side of the globe, stayed with me. The saffron robed monks in my work are direct echoes of that experience and that day. For me, these monks are spiritual pilgrims that lead us away from the destruction and waste of violence, racism, and hatred. I began painting them, giving space to their calm. The resulting paintings led to a series, and some recent large works-on-paper on this theme are featured in the LOOK Gallery's upcoming exhibition 100 for 1000.
(February 18 to March 31, 2010)

More Images at: Gregg Chadwick at LOOK Gallery
More info at: LOOK Gallery

100 for 1000 opens at the LOOK Gallery in Los Angeles on Thursday, February 18th, 2010. The exhibit runs from February 18th until March 31st. A main gallery wall provides a contemplative space for my recent large works on paper and I will have a large number of 30"x22" monotypes on display as well.

Artists include:
Ann Arden, Sally Peterson, Gregg Chadwick, Eric Poppleton, Cathy Charles, Jeff Robinson, Ghislaine Fenmore, Ronald Santos, Jerri Levi, Bruna Stude, Mike Lohr, Artie Twitchell, Ramon Lopez, Kent Twitchell, Stephanie Mercado, Mike Vegas, Chris Naylor, Adam Wolpert and Walt Peregoy


LOOK Gallery
1933 S. Broadway, Suite 111
Los Angeles, CA 90007
RSVP at (213)748-1113
OPENING RECEPTION FEBRUARY 18 6-9PM

Map It: Directions to the LOOK Gallery

Through Tibetan Eyes: Monks Urged by the Dalai Lama to Spend Losar Remembering

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 during the previous year," said Thubbstan, a 24-year-old Tibetan monk who was passing through Chengdu this week.

Thubbstan referred to the pro-independence protests in Tibet last March that were brutally shut down by Chinese soldiers.
Many monks were killed in the violence.

"We cannot forget our fellow men who sacrificed for our benefit," reads a text message a Tibetan monk received on his cellphone several weeks ago. "To commemorate Losar, we will not celebrate, we will not fire fireworks, we won't wear new clothes, we won't dance, we won't sing. We will protest silently and we will pray."


Gregg Chadwick
Through Tibetan Eyes
72"x96" oil on linen 2008

More at:
We will protest silently and we will pray

Taking Back Our Losar

2008 The Year and More in Images

Watching the Beijing Olympics, Thinking of Tibet

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
Through Tibetan Eyes
72"x96" oil on linen 2008

Before the current Olympics began there were signs of hope that the question of Tibet would be approached peacefully and intelligently by the senior Chinese leadership. Nicholas D. Kristof wrote in his New York Times opinion piece,
An Olive Branch From the Dalai Lama:

"The senior Chinese leadership should respond by expressing serious interest in talks at the presidential or prime ministerial level. In ancient days, the Olympics were a time to suspend conflict. In that spirit, the two sides should get to work to prepare for a visit by the Dalai Lama in November, followed by top-level negotiations aimed at a historic resolution of the Tibet question. The ball is in the Chinese court."


Tibet The Story Of A Tragedy




More at:
Art of Peace Foundation.
An Olive Branch From the Dalai Lama
Team Darfur