Speed of Life

by Gregg Chadwick Gregg Chadwick The Late Afternoon of Time - San Francisco 24"x20" oil on linen 2018 Cities, like people, grow and change.  In this spirit, San Francisco  continues to inform my paintings. Last weekend, at a friend's birthday gathering in Culver City, I recounted how  o ne morning, when I lived in San Francisco, I spotted the artist Richard Diebenkorn   leaning up against a BART entrance watching the cable car turnaround across Market Street. Diebenkorn was captivated by the movement of the conductors as they spun the cars around on a giant wooden turntable. I stopped, leaned up against a wall, and flipped through art writer Robert Hughes' book Nothing If Not Critical until I reached his essay on Diebenkorn. I read slowly, pausing often to gaze up at Diebenkorn as he gazed towards Powell Street.   Eventually, I closed the book, walked over and thanked Richard Diebenkorn for his art and inspiration. He smiled and tears seemed to we...

by Gregg Chadwick I have been carrying my copy of Jana Prikryl's engaging book of poems " The After Party " with me for a few months now. Before I go out the door, I almost always slip the collection into an open slot in my bag. On recent travels from Los Angeles, to San Francisco, to Carmel, to Milwaukee, to Memphis - Prikryl's book has been with me. Each destination flavors my reading of her poems, almost like memory itself. And in a sense that is what Prikryl does in "The After Party". In her book we travel with her through a series of moments, or times, or places, or memories. Unlike many books where the narrator disappears into the text only to reappear as an overbearing Disney-ride like explicator, in " The After Party " Prikryl joins us on a journey through time. Memory can be like an artist's drawing full of smudged marks, erasures, and fantasies. Prikryl acknowledges this in her poems and lets us glide through her veils of ti...

by Gregg Chadwick At the Hanging Rock   by William Ford (1820–1886) 1875, oil on canvas, 79.2 x 117.5 cm Collection of the National Gallery of Victoria As March drew to a close, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street band played a concert that Australian music writers have lauded. I wish I could have been there to see Springsteen and the band rip it up at Hanging Rock.  Incident on 57th Street in Australia  Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band  Live at Hanging Rock - Second Night - 31-03-2013  Major international musicians often perform outdoor concerts at the Hanging Rock reserve. Leonard Cohen graced the venue in 2010 and last month Springsteen performed two shows at the conclusion of the Australian leg of his 'Wrecking Ball' tour. The musical venue at Hanging Rock is temporary and currently used about once a year for large concerts.  Though I have spent quite a bit of time travelling through Australia over the year...

Grand Central  by GreggChadwick   36"x48" oil on linen 2012

by Gregg Chadwick Eadweard Muybridge Muybridge Animal Locomotion, plate 288 circa 1887 ©  University of Pennsylvania  | uarc@pobox.upenn.edu "....'See how curiously,' said Mr. Muybridge, referring to a photographic series (Plate 288 shown above) of one of our most prominent University baseball nine, 'and yet how perfectly, this plate illustrates the occurrence of an error in catching.' True enough. In the successive pictures the ball is muffed, strikes the player's thigh, runs up under his arm and across his back, while he is looking eagerly on the wrong side for it." - The  Pennsylvanian , 1886  In the 19th century the railroad, the telegraph and the camera transformed our experience of space and time.  JMW Turner's painting  Rain, Steam, and Speed - The Great Western Railway  documents in oil paint the beginnings of this perceptual shift.  In Turner's work, the powerful steam engine races from the painting's perspectival vanis...

Pearl Jam's "The Fixer" Time Lapse Video From Austin Created by JH Jackson

Gregg Chadwick The River Dreams 16"x11" oil on linen 2009 I am reading WS Merwin's recent book of poems - The Shadow of Sirius - and thinking deeply about the mystery of our place in the universe. I had a chance to chat briefly with WS Merwin after his wonderful reading at the Hammer Museum on October 29th. We spoke of elephants and mystery and nature. Inspiring stuff. Professor Stephen Yenser is doing an amazing job with this series of poetry readings at the Hammer. And Mona Simpson's favorite writers series is also top notch. Tonight, YiyunLi, author of A Thousand Years of Good Prayers , will be reading. More on WS Merwin: WS Merwin Profile More on the Hammer Museum: Watch and Listen More on elephants and why we must protect them: Elephant Reflections - new from UC Press Photographs by Karl Ammann and Text by Dale Peterson

U2 Performs "Faraway, So Close" Live in Berlin - July 18, 2009 (Cassiel this one is for you! Nous sommes embarque.)