Today: Santa Monica Airport ArtWalk - March 16, 2013

Explore open studios, watch artful demonstrations, enjoy live music, food trucks and family friendly activities. Painting, sculpture, ceramics, and mixed media will be represented and many artists will be selling work from their studios and offering refreshments.  More than 60 local artists and performers will have their private studios and works on view. The airport has developed over time into an arts incubator, and is home to a number of creative venues housed in converted airplane hangars. click here to view the full ARTWALK PROGRAM ARENA 1 presents: Decade of Dissent: Democracy in Action, 1965-1975, an exhibition featuring protest posters that reveal the persuasive power of art to inspire ideals of democracy. www.arena1gallery.com 12:30pm GUIDED TOUR  with Carol Wells, founder of the Center for the Study of Political Graphics, the largest repository of post–World War II historical posters in the nation.

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Notes on the Painting: A Balance of Shadows

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 that is also used to translate bodhi, prajna and buddhahood.

A series of interactions between this painting and viewers worldwide has taken place on the web. Poets, writers and artists from Brazil, to Hong Kong, to Greece, to the Netherlands have interacted with the painting in online dialogues. I have traveled widely in my quest to understand the international connections between east and west. These global interactions inflect my understanding of the painting and help me understand my need to create this work.

Throughout my life I have been compelled to create artworks that depict a world caught between color and elegy, between memory and dream. Inspired by the Buddhist practices of people across the globe, I have created images referencing Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Korea, Japan, Burma, The United States, India and China. These artworks seem to depict a world in which humanity struggles not just to survive, but to live. My paintings bring out questions.  What does it mean to honor the space between seeing and being? What is the place of beauty in the modern world? Where is the space for contemplation in contemporary life?

In reference to my paintings of monks inspired by Eastern Philosophy, the art writer Peter Clothier has said:

“They exist in an aura of light rather than on some earthly plane. They move through space like transient beings, absorbed in their own silent, meditative isolation. In this way, they seem to project some of the real values of their Buddhist faith: the inevitable passage of time that is at the root of so much human suffering, the illusory quality of what we take to be the real world and, most importantly, the promise of an escape from suffering into enlightenment.”

- Gregg Chadwick, May 2012

3rd Annual Santa Monica Airport Artwalk on Saturday, March 28 from 1 to 5 pm and Doni Silver Simons Opens at Sherry Frumkin, March 26 from 6-9 pm

2010 Update: The 4th Annual Santa Monica Airport Artwalk is on March 20, 2010 from 1-5pm
Details at:
Airport Artwalk


Gregg Chadwick
The Presence of Light
48"x36" oil on linen 2009

When a painting seems to be finished I ask,
"Is the work open enough to allow the viewer
to enter into the painting and find their own
path or story?" If not, I dive back in again.

Coming up soon is the 3rd Annual Santa Monica Airport Artwalk on Saturday, March 28 from 1 to 5 pm. My studio will be open and I will have a group of new paintings on view. This will be a nice opportunity for you to take some time off from the stresses of our twittering world and to enter into my paintings in search of your own paths or stories.

I will be in Tokyo but my talented friend, the singer/songwriter/dancer Kelly Colbert, will be on hand to answer questions and to engage you in conversation about art and perhaps, life?


Gregg Chadwick
Zeitgeist
48"x36" oil on linen 2009

Also, that same week, the numinous artist, Doni Silver Simons', exhibition "....lines...." will open at the Sherry Frumkin Gallery on Thursday, March 26, 2009. The reception runs from 6-9pm. The Sherry Frumkin Gallery is in the same hangar as my studio, as is Doni's studio. As an act of community, Doni has asked us to open our studios during her opening on Thursday, March 26. Kelly Colbert will be on hand in my studio on the 26th as well. I am fortunate to have such a group of intelligent, talented and caring artists and gallerists around me. When the news of the world threatens to throttle our creative souls, a shared artistic community can help keep us on the path. Doni Silver Simon's work marks the passage of time yet its open spaces are less elegiac than timeless. Like the photos of Hiroshi Sugimoto, Doni Silver Simons limns the ineffable space of time.


Doni Silver Simons
Neilah
16'3"w x 7'h
Acrylic on Linen



The Santa Monica Art Studios are located at 3026 Airport Avenue, Santa Monica, CA 90405.
My studio is #15



More at:
3rd Annual Santa Monica Airport Artwalk
Santa Monica Art Studios
Doni Silver Simons







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