News and Events: Winter 2014

Gregg Chadwick

Pennsylvania 4901

54”x54” oil on linen 2014

                                                

Recent Events: Winter 2014

1. My paintings were featured in the Sandra Lee Gallery booth at the Palm Springs Fine Art Fair-an international art fair held Feb 13-16, 2014 at the Convention Center in Palm Springs, California.

2. From January 9, 2014 until February 28, 2014, at the Sandra Lee Gallery in San Francisco, California, my paintings were included in a group exhibition along with work by Kathryn Arnold, Henry Jackson, Irena Kononova, Jeremy Morgan, Jeffrey Palladini, Hyun Su Park, Daniel Phill, George Rivera, Jungsan Senim and others. 

3. I was recently interviewed by the Los Angeles Business Journal for an article about the Saatchi Art Gallery. 

4. My painting Mulholland Blue was included in Saatchi Art's "Best of 2013" feature: http://art.saatchionline.com/bestof2013/

5. On Friday, December 13th, 2013 we chased away the demons with an inspiring book reading at Book Soup on Sunset in Hollywood with the presentation of “Burning the Midnight Oil: Illuminating Words for the Long Night's Journey into Day”, which includes my essay “Night Painting”. And at Book Passage in Corte Madera on December 18, 2013 at 7 pm we brought the house down with another inspired event. 

This marvelous book, edited by Phil Cousineau, includes an inspiring array of essays and poems: including pieces by Vincent Van Gogh, Walt Whitman, Pico Iyer, Rabandranath Tagore, Mary Oliver, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Jorge Borges, William Blake, Mikkel Aaland, Kent Chadwick, Alexander Eliot, Jane Winslow Eliot, Li Po, Antler, Annie Dillard, Charles Bukowski, R B Morris, Willis Barnstone, Bruce Chatwin, James Norwood Pratt, Tess Harper, Stuart Balcomb, Richard Beban, Gregg Chadwick, and more.

More on “Burning the Midnight Oil: Illuminating Words for the Long Night's Journey into Day” on NPR's Weekend Edition.

6. Saatchi Art featured my painting Il Poeta di Milano at Dwell on Design, America’s largest design event, at the Los Angeles Convention Center - June 21-23, 2013. The event was curated by the editors of Dwell magazine. 

7. My paintings were showcased in the Sandra Lee Gallery booth at artMRKT San Francisco - an international art fair held May 16-19, 2013 in the Festival Pavilion - Fort Mason Center, San Francisco, California. 

8. I spoke at the “Categorically Not” event on Sunday May 19, 2013 at the Santa Monica Art Studios about my painting process and “what lies beneath” the layers of paint and the layers of ideas that go into each of my works. The event was held in the Arena One Gallery. You can see more on this event at the Categorically Not website. 

9. My painting Study for the City Dreams was in the Silent Art Auction at The 34th anniversary of the Venice Art Walk & Auctions which took place on Sunday, May 19th, 2013 at Google Los Angeles in the Frank Gehry designed Binoculars Building

10. Review by Jeffrey Carlson in Fine Art Connoisseur:

Gregg Chadwick and Painting Time    

Valentine's Day

Gregg Chadwick
The Golden Hour
10"x8" oil on panel 2014

Happy Valentine's Day!

I thought I would feature a new painting and Bruce Springsteen's haunting version of his song For You to honor lovers across the globe.

Deerhead Diner

by Gregg Chadwick

Gregg Chadwick

  Deerhead Diner

24”x36” oil on linen 2014

Like a scene pulled from a Scorsese film or lifted from a Sopranos’ episode, my painting “Deerhead Diner” evokes an American scene of tough guys and two bit joints. Inspired by an actual diner I would visit in Queens near LaGuardia airport, “Deerhead Diner” depicts a timeless yet vanishing world.

The Simpsons' Tribute to Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli

by Gregg Chadwick

Beer for Homer at Miyazaki's Ghibli Museum in Mitaka, Japan
photo by Gregg Chadwick

I just love this new clip from Sunday's upcoming Simpsons episode which includes a wonderful and comedic tribute to animator Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli. The magic that Miyazaki has created resonates globally. Enjoy!

Robot From Castle in the Sky at Ghibli Museum
photo by Gregg Chadwick

New Exhibition for the New Year

Gregg Chadwick
l'Horloge de Baudelaire (Baudelaire's Clock) 
40" x 30" oil on linen 2013
courtesy Sandra Lee Gallery, San Francisco, California

Opening on January 9, 2014, from 5:00-7:30pm, at the Sandra Lee Gallery in San Francisco, California is a new group exhibition which includes my artwork along with work by Kathryn Arnold, Henry Jackson, Irena Kononova, Jeremy Morgan, Jeffrey Palladini, Hyun Su Park, Daniel Phill, George Rivera, Jungsan Senim and others. The exhibition runs until January 31, 2014.

The Sandra Lee Gallery is located at:
 251 Post Street, Suite 310, San Francisco, CA 94108
[t] 415.291.8000
art@sandraleegallery.com

Mulholland Blue in Saatchi Online's Best of 2013

Gregg Chadwick
Mulholland Blue
 24"x30" oil on linen 2013

Honored that my painting Mulholland Blue is included in Saatchi Online's "Best of 2013" feature:

http://art.saatchionline.com/bestof2013/

Wednesday at Book Passage in Corte Madera - Burning the Midnight Oil: Illuminating Words for the Long Night's Journey Into Day

Gregg Chadwick
Night Swim, Kaufmann House
24"x30" oil on linen 2013
Courtesy Sandra Lee Gallery, San Francisco, California

 On Friday, December 13th, we chased away the demons with an inspiring book reading
 at Book Soup on Sunset in Hollywood with the presentation of Burning the Midnight Oil: Illuminating Words for the Long Night's Journey into Day, which includes my essay Night Painting. Please join us at Book Passage in Corte Madera on December 18, 2013 at 7 pm for our next event. I will again be reading.

This marvelous book, edited by Phil Cousineau, includes an inspiring array of essays and poems: including pieces by Vincent Van Gogh, Walt Whitman, Pico Iyer, Rabandranath Tagore, Mary Oliver, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Jorge Borges, William Blake, Mikkel Aaland, Kent Chadwick, Alexander Eliot, Jane Winslow Eliot, Li Po, Antler, Annie Dillard, Charles Bukowski, R B Morris, Willis Barnstone, Bruce Chatwin, James Norwood Pratt, Tess Harper, Stuart Balcomb, Richard Beban, Gregg Chadwick, and more.

Phil Cousineau and I will be appearing with special guest Jeff "the Dude" Dowd. 
Yes, that one.

The event is free and open to the public.


More info at:   http://www.bookpassage.com/event/phil-cousineau-burning-midnight-oil

Nelson Mandela 1918 - 2013

The Courage to Create at Esalen December 6-8 2013

The Courage to Create

WEEKEND OF DECEMBER 6-8, 2013

Gregg Chadwick
The Painter (il miglior fabbro)
24"x30" oil on linen 2013

What role does creativity play in our lives? Is it an inner imperative that helps us forge the well-lived life? This workshop at Esalen, situated along California's rugged Big Sur coastline, engages with the notion that creativity is a “battle with the gods” in light of its Latin origins in the word creare, the natural urge “to grow or make order of chaos."

Our point of departure is that creativity is an archetypal journey with recognizable stages, which are especially helpful when we are stuck or lost in our work. For the last thirty years, Phil Cousineau has used his three-stage model — Inspiration, Perspiration, and Realization — as a guide to help writers, artists, and filmmakers to deepen and complete their work. The artist Gregg Chadwick uses his own artwork and anecdotes from his lifelong study of painters to provide an inside look at practices that will help us find a balance between inspiration and the marketplace, traditional notions of beauty with daring acts of innovation, and personal discipline with the importance of building community. Together, they will alternate lecture, discussion, movie clips, slide shows, readings, and exercises that encourage cross-fertilization between the visual arts and the written word.

This workshop is designed for creative souls in every field who hope to rekindle their imagination and passion, and renew their sense of joy.

Recommended reading: Cousineau, Stoking the Creative Fires and The Art of Pilgrimage; Cousineau and Chadwick, The Painted Word.

Gregg Chadwick
Die Kathedrale Der Bücher (The Cathedral of Books)              
36"x48" oil on linen 2013

More Info at:
http://www.esalen.org/workshop/weekend-december-6-8/courage-create

Phil Cousineau

Phil Cousineau

Phil Cousineau is a freelance writer, filmmaker, teacher, and youth baseball coach. He has published more than 30 books, including the bestselling The Hero's Journey: The Life and Work of Joseph Campbell. He has written award-winning documentary films, and is the host of "Global Spirit," a nationally broadcast series on LINK TV and PBS.

Email Me

www.philcousineau.net

Gregg Chadwick

Gregg Chadwick

Gregg Chadwick creates his artwork in an old airplane hangar in Santa Monica, California. The recurring sound of airplane take-offs and landings from the active airport runway outside his studio reminds him of his own history of travel. Chadwick has exhibited his artworks in galleries and museums both nationally and internationally. He earned a Bachelor's Degree at UCLA and a Master’s Degree at NYU, both in Fine Art. He has had notable solo exhibitions at the Manifesta Maastricht Gallery (Maastricht, The Netherlands), Space AD 2000 (Tokyo, Japan), the Sandra Lee Gallery (San Francisco), and the Lisa Coscino Gallery (Pacific Grove) among others. He has participated in nearly one hundred group exhibitions including at the di Rosa Preserve's Off the Preserve (Sonoma), the San Francisco Art Institute, the Sonoma Museum of Visual Art, the Monterey Art Museum, the LOOK Gallery (Los Angeles), the Arena 1 Gallery (Santa Monica), and the Arts Club of Washington (Washington DC). Chadwick’s art is notably included in the collections of the Adobe Corporation, the Gilpin Museum, the Graciela Hotel in Burbank, the Harbor Court Hotel in San Francisco; the Kimpton Group’s headquarters in San Francisco, the National Museum of the Marine Corps, Nordstrom Company Headquarters, the W Hotel Hollywood, and Winona State University.

Chadwick is frequently invited to lecture on the arts; in 2011-13 he spoke at UCLA, Monterey Peninsula College, the Esalen Institute, and at the World Views forum in Amsterdam, The Netherlands as well as at Categorically Not, a monthly forum that considers the arts and science, in May 2013.

Email Me

www.greggchadwick.com

High Hopes

 Bruce Springsteen On His New Album High Hopes:

I was working on a record of some of our best unreleased material from the past decade when Tom Morello (sitting in for Steve during the Australian leg of our tour) suggested we ought to add “High Hopes” to our live set.  I had cut “High Hopes,” a song by Tim Scott McConnell of the LA based Havalinas, in the 90′s.  We worked it up in our Aussie rehearsals and Tom then proceeded to burn the house down with it.  We re-cut it mid tour at Studios 301 in Sydney along with “Just Like Fire Would,” a song from one of my favorite early Australian punk bands, The Saints (check out “I’m Stranded”).  Tom and his guitar became my muse, pushing the rest of this project to another level.  Thanks for the inspiration Tom.

Some of these songs, “American Skin” and “Ghost of Tom Joad,” you’ll be familiar with from our live versions.  I felt they were among the best of my writing and deserved a proper studio recording. 

 ”The Wall” is something I’d played on stage a few times and remains very close to my heart.  The title and idea were Joe Grushecky’s, then the song appeared after Patti and I made a visit to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington.  It was inspired by my memories of Walter Cichon.  Walter was one of the great early Jersey Shore rockers, who along with his brother Ray (one of my early guitar mentors) led the ”Motifs”.  The Motifs were a local rock band who were always a head above everybody else.  Raw, sexy and rebellious, they were the heroes you aspired to be.  But these were heroes you could touch, speak to, and go to with your musical inquiries.  Cool, but always accessible, they were an inspiration to me, and many young working musicians in 1960′s central New Jersey.   Though my character in “The Wall” is a Marine, Walter was actually in the Army, A Company, 3rd Battalion, 8th Infantry.  He was the first person I ever stood in the presence of who was filled with the mystique of the true rock star.  Walter went missing in action in Vietnam in March 1968.  He still performs somewhat regularly in my mind, the way he stood, dressed, held the tambourine, the casual cool, the freeness. The man who by his attitude, his walk said “you can defy all this, all of what’s here, all of what you’ve been taught, taught to fear, to love and you’ll still be alright.”  His was a terrible loss to us, his loved ones and the local music scene.  I still miss him.

This is music I always felt needed to be released.  From the gangsters of “Harry’s Place,” the ill-prepared roomies on “Frankie Fell In Love” (shades of Steve and I bumming together in our Asbury Park apartment) the travelers in the wasteland of “Hunter Of Invisible Game,” to the soldier and his visiting friend in “The Wall”, I felt they all deserved a home and a hearing.

Hope you enjoy it,
Bruce Springsteen

Pre-order High Hopes here

Meet the De Blasios, New York City's New First Family

Meet the De Blasios, New York City's new first family: http://nym.ag/1g5FMyi   

pic.twitter.com/oyyLtf62PL via @NYMag

Orpheus and Eurydice in the 21st Century: R.B. Kitaj, Rilke and Arcade Fire (Part 1)

by Gregg Chadwick

Last night the L.A. Louver Gallery held a rousing discussion: R.B. Kitaj's Life & Passion, with Tracy Bartley (director of the R.B. Kitaj studio), Derek Boshier (artist), David N. Myers (professor and chair of the UCLA History Department), and Paul Holdengräber (curator, instigator and Director/Founder of LIVE from the New York Public Library).

Titian
Orpheus and Eurydice 15 9/16" x 20 7/8" oil on wood ca. 1508–12
Accademia Carrara, Bergamo
photo courtesy Metropolitan Museum, New York

As I listened to the conversation, I scanned the room full of many of Kitaj's last paintings and was struck by the realization that in these artworks Kitaj was attempting to bring his deceased wife Sandra  back from death - Kitaj as the poet/artist incarnation of the mythic Orpheus would bring Sandra (his Eurydice, taken too soon) back from the underworld. These vibrant paintings were not just a testament to their passion but instead an almost alchemical journey into the mystery and abyss of life, loss, and love. 

In the myth, Orpheus travels to the underworld to win back the life of Eurydice, who was bitten by a serpent (seen above in the left vignette of Titian's painting from the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo, Italy) and died shortly after the two wed. Orpheus plays music of such beauty for Hades, master of the underworld, that he allows Eurydice to return to Earth with Orpheus.  But with the strict condition that Orpheus walk in front of Eurydice and never look back during their journey from the depths. Overcome by an anxious fear, Orpheus breaks his discipline and turns to look back at his reborn Eurydice only to cause her to vanish forever. 

R.B.Kitaj
Los Angeles No. 27 (Go Down)
 36" x 36" oil on canvas 2003–4
photo courtesy L.A. Louver Gallery

When I reached home, Reflektor - the new album from Arcade Fire, was already downloading onto my computer. The songs on this album also engage with the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. 

Auguste Rodin’s marble statue of Orpheus and Eurydice, from the Metropolitan Museum in New York, graces Reflektor's album cover.  This image portrays the essential kernel of the myth, the mytheme of not looking back, which is also reflected in the Biblical story of Lot's wife escaping from Sodom and the Grimms' folk tale Hansel and Gretel.

Gregg Chadwick
Mulholland Blue
24"x30" oil on linen 2013
(Currently curated by Director Rebecca Wilson on Saatchi Online into featured collection)

My new painting Mulholland Blue also engages with the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. In my work, an Orpheus-like character in the foreground vanishes as a green dressed Eurydice figure slips into the distance. The distant lights of the city glisten in the night air. Does she stand for a moment to view the world she will never return to? Or is our 21st century urbanity the underworld?

In upcoming posts I will consider these questions as well as diving much more deeply into R.B. Kitaj, Rilke, and Arcade Fire. Next up in Part 2: Rilke Releases Eurydice. 

New York City Man - Lou Reed

by Gregg Chadwick

"Lou Reed gave us the street and the landscape - and we peopled it."
 - David Bowie in the documentary "Rock 'n' Roll Heart - Lou Reed"

Well hey, man, that's just a lie
It's a lie she tells her friends
'Cause the real song, the real song
Where she won't even admit to herself
The beatin' in her heart
It's a song lots of people know
It's a painful song
A little sad truth
But life's full of sad songs
Penny for a wish
But wishin' won't make you a soldier.
With a pretty kiss for a pretty face
Can't have it's way

Y'know tramps like us, we were born to pay
 - From the beginning of the "Slipaway" section of Lou Reed's song Street Hassle.
    Uncredited spoken vocals by Bruce Springsteen.

Annie Leibovitz
Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson 
Coney Island, New York, 1995
Silver Print

When I found out about Lou Reed's death yesterday morning from Rolling Stone's twitter feed I turned to my Lou Reed playlist and put Reed's cover of Blind Lemon Jefferson's haunting blues number - See That My Grave is Kept Clean along with Antony and the Johnsons' song with Lou Reed - Fistful of Love, and Reed's elegiac urban hymn Berlin, on repeat. 

For many of us who came of age and under the influence of the New York City of the 1970's and 1980's, Lou Reed was New York. While at NYU working on my grad degree in art, Reed's music provided an aural map for my explorations across the city. Reed's staccato talk/singing proved to be a gruff yet tender guided tour through my artistic and lovelorn ventures. Often while on the A train, Marty Fogel's Junior Walker fueled sax riff on Reed's Shooting Star would blare in my walkman's headphones. And Walk on the Wild Side always seemed to accompany me across Washington Square. 

Gregg Chadwick
Ghosts of New Amsterdam
24"x36" oil on linen 2013

Reed's urban suite New York kept me close to the city I loved even as I moved west to California. On a trip back to Manhattan a few years later, a friend who had opened a restaurant in the Village told me that she thought that she had been given a sign that she would make it, because Lou Reed was becoming a regular at her joint. 

Not long after, Reed and his song Why Can't I be Good rumbled across the screen in Wim Wenders' cinematic sequel to Wings of Desire - Far Away So Close. Lou Reed's future wife, performance artist, composer and musician Laurie Anderson, also provided powerful music for the film. On a recent artistic excursion to Berlin, memories of these two films and Reed's album Berlin brought to light elements of the city that I had missed in the past. 




 


Much like an author will write about an event or a place to learn what they feel, I will create a series of artworks to understand what I have seen. I pushed my interaction with Berlin into a recent ongoing series of monotypes fueled partly by the visions of Lou Reed, Wim Wenders, Bertolt Brecht, and David Bowie, 

Gregg Chadwick
Brecht's Song
30"x22" monotype on paper 2011

As Gavin Edwards wrote in Rolling Stone,"While many musicians have made Berlin albums, Lou Reed's Berlin (1973) is the wrist-slashing standard against which they're all judged. When the record concluded with the epic ballad Sad Song, it felt like the whole world was shutting down." Berlin forces us to wrestle with the dead as we walk through its haunted and enchanted streets. After the fall of the wall, Berlin has come to embody the future while at the same time carrying the scars of the past. In the city of Berlin, the political and the personal merge, as evidenced in Lou Reed's Berlin album and David Bowie's recent song Where Are We Now?. In Berlin we are left with existential questions and are reminded that bodies age and die, marriages end, friendships dissolve and memories fade. 

Gregg Chadwick
Rauch Licht (Smoke Light)
30"x22" monotype on paper 2011

During the last years of his life, Lou Reed continued to work with and inspire younger musicians and artists. One of the most fruitful of these mentorship/collaborations was his work with Antony, of Antony and the Johnsons. John Hodgman in the New York Times recounts how the cover image of Antony's EP, I Fell in Love With a Dead Boy "caught the attention of the producer Hal Willner, who bought the EP and played it for Lou Reed, with whom he was working at the time:

'I said, 'Who is that?' Reed recalled. 'So we set out to find him, and he was a few blocks away as it turns out.' ''

Lou Reed invited Antony to tour with him throughout 2003, and every night Antony would sing Candy Says, Reed's haunting tribute to Candy Darling. Caught in the video below, Lou Reed, one of the most influential musicians of the rock era, looks across towards Antony with an expression of pride and wonder. Lou seems mesmerized by what he described as Antony's double tracking and unusual harmonies. Reed had said that he could listen to Antony sing all day. In this video we witness a legend passing on his wisdom and inspiration to another.



Antony and Lou Reed Perform Candy Says



More Videos Below:



Lou Reed & David Bowie Discuss Reed's Album Transformer
 in the documentary "Rock 'n' Roll Heart - Lou Reed"

In an interview with Rolling Stone in 1989, Lou Reed explained that he and Bruce Springsteen were both recording albums at the Record Plant in New York City when an engineer suggested inviting Bruce over to record the "Slipaway" vocals on Reed's song Street Hassle. The last line was Reed's, written with Springsteen's Born to Run in mind:

Y'know tramps like us, we were born to pay


More at:
Lou Reed: The Rolling Stone Interview
Antony Finds His Voice

  
Lou Reed greets Chuck Close in front of Close's 2012 tapestry Lou 

    published by Magnolia Editions; photo by Amanda Gordon/Bloomberg

August 2013