Speed of Life

Gregg Chadwick Jordaan Window (Coffee in Amsterdam) 25cm x 25cm oil on wood 2010 Late Light  by Philip Levine (January 10, 1928 - 2015) Rain filled the streets once a year, rising almost to door and window sills, battering walls and roofs until it cleaned away the mess we'd made. My father told me this, he told me it ran downtown and spilled into the river, which in turn emptied finally into the sea. He said this only once while I sat on the arm of his chair and stared out at the banks of gray snow melting as the March rain streaked past. All the rest of that day passed on into childhood, into nothing, or perhaps some portion hung on in a tiny corner of thought. Perhaps a clot of cinders that peppered the front yard clung to a spar of old weed or the concrete lip of the curb and worked its way back under the new growth spring brought and is a part of that yard still. Perhaps light falling on distant houses becomes those houses, hunching them down at dusk like sheep browsing on a fa...

 by Gregg Chadwick 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 hospi...

Ilya Kaminsky  was born in Odessa, Ukraine in 1977, and arrived to the United States in 1993, when his family was granted asylum by the American government. He is the author of Deaf Republic (Graywolf Press) and  Dancing In Odessa (Tupelo Press) and co-editor and co-translated many other books, including Ecco Anthology of International Poetry (Harper Collins) and Dark Elderberry Branch: Poems of Marina Tsvetaeva (Alice James Books). His work won The Los Angeles Times Book Award, The Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, The National Jewish Book Award, the Guggenheim Fellowship, The Whiting Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Metcalf Award, Lannan Fellowship, Academy of American Poets’ Fellowship, NEA Fellowship, Poetry magazine's Levinson Prize, and was also shortlisted for the National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, Neustadt International Literature Prize, and T.S. Eliot Prize (UK). Deaf Republic was The New York Times’ Notable Book for 2019, and was al...

SEAMUS HEANEY Reads “The Cure at Troy” “History says, Don't hope on this side of the grave. But then, once in a lifetime the longed for tidal wave of justice can rise up, and hope and history rhyme.” Future US President Joe Biden often quotes these inspiring lines from Seamus Heaney's "The Cure at Troy" Hat Tip to Paul Holdengraber @holdengraber

Gregg Chadwick The River Dreams 16"x11" oil on linen 2009 I learned tonight about the death of  W.S. Merwin. I had a chance to chat briefly with W.S. Merwin after his wonderful reading at the Hammer Museum on October 29, 2009. We spoke of elephants and mystery and nature. Inspiring memories. The poems of W. S. Merwin’s mature career were often Delphic, haunted, and bleak. They seemed to have been delivered unto him, and he transcribed them by lightning flash. https://t.co/Z4biUog5VT — The New Yorker (@NewYorker) March 17, 2019 More on W.S. Merwin: W.S. Merwin Profile Paul Holdengraber In Conversation with W.S. Merwin Poem for Merwin 

by Gregg Chadwick Gregg Chadwick Between Worlds (Chicago) 24"x24" oil on linen 2018 Sneak peek at new artwork to be featured at The Other Art Fair in Chicago -  My oil on linen painting Between Worlds (Chicago) was inspired by the industrial design of Raymond Loewy and the spirit of adventure that lies at the heart of the United States.  Two vehicles designed by Loewy stand side by side in a rail yard with the Chicago skyline behind. Glistening in black, the streamlined Pennsylvania Railroad “Broadway Limited” shares the scene with a gold 1938 Studebaker President.

Gregg Chadwick Still I Rise 40"x30" oil on linen 2017 "From all this, my friends, there arises an insight which the poet must learn through other people. There is no insurmountable solitude. All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are. And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence in order to reach forth to the enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance and sing our sorrowful song - but in this dance or in this song there are fulfilled the most ancient rites of our conscience in the awareness of being human and of believing in a common destiny." --Pablo Neruda

by Gregg Chadwick I first heard U2's 1987 album The Joshua Tree in Western Australia. The album's Cinemascope sound provided the soundtrack for my next few months traveling the breadth of that expansive country from Perth, to Uluru (Ayers Rock), to Darwin, to Melbourne, to Sydney. Having spent a number of summers as a kid traveling across the grand deserts of the United States, I could hear the arid landscape in U2's songs. And while riding through the red deserts of Australia's outback I felt right at home. I gazed at Anton Corbijn's evocative black and white photography each time I pulled  The Joshua Tree out of the cassette case and popped it into my Walkman. My brother Kent is a poet, and I thought of him often as I listened to the poetic, atmospheric wash opening the album. In those Australian months, I often peered out of a bus window as we careened through the desert dust with Bono's plaintive wail in my ear. From Bullet the Blue Sky, to Red H...