Hello Sunshine from Bruce Springsteen's Western Stars

by Gregg Chadwick

“This record is a return to my solo recordings featuring character driven songs and sweeping, cinematic orchestral arrangements. It's a jewel box of a record."
- Bruce Springsteen 

Gregg Chadwick
Las Piedras del Cielo
16"x20" oil on linen 2010

Under blue skies on a California Spring day, I am listening to Bruce Springsteen's new song Hello Sunshine from his forthcoming album Western Stars. It is a country tinged song reminiscent of Harry Nilsson's Everybody's Talkin' from the movie, Midnight Cowboy.  

Over the years I have driven thousands of miles under wide open skies across the American west. Scanning the radio dial as I drove, I was searching for the sound of the western road. Today I found that cinematic sound in Springsteen's new work.  A rhythmic wash like a distant train running in the distance underlies the song. Pedal steel brings us into the west and the strings add a wide open sonic vista. Bruce's vocals are world weary but not defeated. 



"Hello Sunshine" and an accompanying video will be released just after midnight ET tonight - April 25, 2019.
You can listen to the song now on E Street Radio - Link here.

Hello Sunshine

Had enough of heartbreak and pain

I had a little sweet spot for the rain

For the rain and skies of gray

Hello sunshine, won't you stay

You know I always liked my walking shoes

But you can get a little too fond of the blues

You walk too far, you walk away

Hello sunshine, won't you stay

You know I always loved a lonely town

Those empty streets, no one around

You fall in love with lonely, you end up that way

Hello sunshine, won't you stay

You know I always liked that empty road

No place to be and miles to go

But miles to go is miles away

Hello sunshine, won't you stay

And miles to go is miles away

Hello sunshine, won't you stay

Hello sunshine, won't you stay

Hello sunshine

℗ 2019 Bruce Springsteen

Released on: 2019-04-26

Drums: Matt Chamberlain

Steel Guitar: Marc Muller

Conductor: Rob Mathes

Other: Sandy Park

Violin: Lisa Kim

Violin: Hyunju Lee

Violin: Joanna Maurer

Violin: Sharon Yamada

Violin: Annaliesa Place

Violin: Suzanne Ornstein

Violin: Liz Lim

Violin: Jung Sun Yoo

Violin: Emily Popham

Viola: Robert Rinehart

Viola: Vivek Kamath

Viola: Desiree Elsevier

Cello: Alan Stepansky

Cello: Nathan Vickery

Engineer, Producer: Ron Aniello

Engineer: Rob Lebret

Engineer: Ross Petersen

Engineer: Toby Scott

Mixing Engineer: Tom Elmhirst

Assistant Engineer: Joe Visciano

Mastering Engineer: Bob Ludwig

Bruce Springsteen’s  new studio album Western Stars takes his music to the American West, drawing inspiration in part from the Southern California pop records of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. The 13 tracks of Western Stars encompass a sweeping range of American themes, of highways and desert spaces, of isolation and community and the permanence of home and hope.

The album was recorded primarily at Springsteen’s home studio in New Jersey, with additional recording in California and New York. Ron Aniello produced the album with Springsteen and plays bass, keyboard, and other instruments. Patti Scialfa provides vocals and contributes vocal arrangements on four tracks. The musical arrangements include strings, horns, pedal steel and contributions from more than 20 other players including Jon Brion (who plays celeste, Moog, and farfisa), as well as guest appearances by David Sancious, Charlie Giordano, and Soozie Tyrell. The album was mixed by Tom Elmhirst.

Columbia Records will release Springsteen’s 19th studio album on June 14. 
Western Stars will be available for pre-order on Friday, April 26.

Western Stars Song Titles

1. Hitch Hikin’

2. The Wayfarer

3. Tucson Train

4. Western Stars

5. Sleepy Joe’s Café

6. Drive Fast (The Stuntman)

7. Chasin’ Wild Horses

8. Sundown

9. Somewhere North of Nashville

10. Stones

11. There Goes My Miracle

12. Hello Sunshine

13. Moonlight Motel

All songs written by Bruce Springsteen

For more info click here:

www.brucespringsteen.net

www.facebook.com/brucespringsteen

www.twitter.com/springsteen

www.instagram.com/springsteen

https://www.npr.org/2019/04/26/717330166/bruce-springsteen-finds-a-new-sound-by-looking-to-the-past

Western Stars

by Gregg Chadwick

Gregg Chadwick
Rio Grande
30"x40" oil on linen 2015

 Under blue skies on a California Spring day, I am listening to Bruce Springsteen's new song Hello Sunshine from his forthcoming album Western Stars. It is a country tinged song reminiscent of Harry Nilsson's Everybody's Talkin' from the movie, Midnight Cowboy.  

Over the years I have driven thousands of miles under wide open skies across the American west. Scanning the radio dial as I drove, I was searching for the sound of the western road. Today I found that cinematic sound in Springsteen's new song. A rhythmic wash like a distant train running in the distance underlies Hello Sunshine. Pedal steel brings us into the west and the strings add a wide open sonic vista. Bruce's vocals are world weary but not defeated. 

Last September I ventured solo from Southern California to Chicago for a show of my artwork at The Other Art Fair in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood. The 2,000 mile drive took me across the western desert scapes of Nevada, Arizona, Utah, and Western Colorado. The espresso fueled hours brought back memories of cross country trips with my family when I was a kid. At night under western stars, my dad drove with the window open to keep him alert. My brother and I would scan the license plates on the trucks and autos around us, hoping to get all 50.  The rushing sounds of wind and tires on the road muted my parent's conversation to a sort of road trip lullaby. I looked out the window as if I was in a movie. Each passing place, every passing car played a role in our family film. We drove from coast to coast - California to New Jersey and back. The last miles were always the most exciting. Driving up the New Jersey turnpike we could feel the power of Manhattan reaching out across the Hudson river. And on the return journey to California, we could see the glow of L.A. on the horizon as we grew close to home. 

Years later when I got out of college, the wanderlust remained. On nights when I didn't have to work the next day, I would take my car out on the road and drive hundreds of miles into the desert and back. As the pink light of sunrise glowed around me I would pull my car in back home. With the engine off, the car would lightly rumble like a horse after a run. I would pick up the morning paper from the driveway. I could taste fresh coffee already. 

Gregg Chadwick
Road Movie
48"x48" oil on linen 2013

Gary Clark Jr.: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert

Yes Indeed!

Broken Poet

BROKEN POET - TRAILER from Emilio Ruiz Barrachina on Vimeo.

Trailer of the movie "Broken Poet". Directed by Emilio J Ruiz and starring Elliott Murphy, Joana Preiss, Michael O'Keeffe, Marisa Berenson, Bruce Springsteen and Patti Scialfa.

Paris - Fluctuat nec Mergitur

by Gregg Chadwick

Gregg Chadwick
Bookseller's Night
oil on linen 2018

After the Notre Dame Cathedral Fire - in the light of day- Our Lady is scarred but standing resiliently!

Angela Merkel’s spokesperson responded with the Parisian motto: a Latin phrase that personifies Paris and Notre Dame as a ship: “Fluctuat nec mergitur”—“she is tossed by the waves but does not sink.” The saying has been Paris’ motto since the 14th century, about the time when Notre Dame was completed.

With grateful feelings about Notre Dame and Paris, I am pleased to let you know that my Parisian inspired painting "Bookseller's Night" has been chosen by Rebecca Wilson, Chief Curator and VP, Art Advisory at Saatchi Art, for the New This Week collection. 

Direct link at: https://www.saatchiart.com/…/Painting-Bo…/25560/4792724/view

Link to the collection at https://www.saatchiart.com/…/New-This-We…/153961/280982/view

My oil on linen painting "Bookseller's Night" was inspired by a sojourn in Paris near Montmartre. That summer the light hung on late into the evening until the sky rolled into a blue hour. While walking the Parisian streets under those deep blue skies, I would often stop to glance at books spread out like magical treatises on art and life. We lived that summer in the shadow of Monet, Manet, and Caillebotte. Two of Manet's last studios were on our street and nearby on the Place de Dublin, Caillebotte set his magical painting "Paris Street; Rainy Day" ("Rue de Paris, temps de pluie"). Nearby was the Gare Saint-Lazare which inspired Monet to create Turneresque images of trains and steam.

I carried those memories with me as I painted "Bookseller's Night" along with time traveling thoughts of San Francisco and New York.

A few years ago, I stood outside in a clearing of a Monterey, California forest near the coast in the middle of the night with my brother and René Boitelle, a painting conservator at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam. Unlike the skies in Los Angeles, we were able to see the stars in the night sky and of course thought of Vincent Van Gogh’s painterly evocations of the glittering night. Van Gogh was able to capture the night in his paintings with his skillful use of midnight blue and starry yellow. Gazing at a Van Gogh painting of a star filled sky, it seems as if he knew that the lights he saw in the dark night sky had traveled from the deepest reaches of time. According to physicists, as we gaze at the stars, in essence we are looking back towards the beginning of time.

Later that week, I stood with René and another conservator, Devi Ormond, before a Van Gogh painting of a weaver; the painting was laid out like a patient on a table in the Getty Museum’s conservation lab. The work seemed so fragile, yet at the same time sturdy and timeless hearkening back to an era of firelight, candlelight, and moonlight. Soon after Van Gogh painted his weavers, the advent of electricity would completely alter the character of the night. Perhaps in every painting of the night there is a hint of this loss, echoing the shadowed forms in the artwork. I am reminded of the nights many years ago when, before painting, I would put Miles Davis on the record player. I would drop the needle on the first track and listen to the hiss and crackle as ‘Round Midnight began to play– the music always muted, blurred as if it emerged from a smoke filled room.

More at: https://medium.com/@gre…/how-the-light-gets-in-fad1a1292ca8…

Mayor Pete Buttigieg Sends His Thoughts to France About the Fire at Notre Dame

Mayor @PeteButtigieg on the Notre Dame fire  pic.twitter.com/BS88OXCLf7

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) April 16, 2019

As the smoke clears in Paris, it appears that the damage to Notre Dame is not catastrophic. The fire has destroyed the wood roof & spire along with some other elements, but the vaulted ceiling survived and Notre Dame is otherwise mostly intact. The grand organ survived the flames. The Pompiers de Paris showed their immense fire fighting skill in saving most of Notre Dame from destruction!

The Water Carrier's Dream

Gregg Chadwick
The Water Carrier's Dream
oil on linen 2017

The Water Carrier's Dream is part of an ongoing, globally inspired series of paintings that considers our place as humans in the larger natural world. The elephant is both a symbol of resilient strength and also, because of the ivory trade, has become a symbol of the possible extinction of numerous animal species. Water as well is a symbol of life. The bucket the woman carries is part of an effort to make clean water safer and more accessible from local, community owned water facilities in Tanzania. The train entering from the distance brings the painting into the present day.

Star Wars: Episode IX - Official Trailer

More Star Wars? Yes, please!

Chadwick Exhibition Arrives at Beverly Hills Gallery

How the Light Gets In

Paintings by Gregg Chadwick

Gregg Chadwick
Still I Rise
40"x30"oil on linen 2018

Solo exhibition of Gregg Chadwick’s art at Audis Husar Fine Art in Beverly Hills.

View all of the exhibition artwork at this link: How the Light Gets InRead about the paintings at these links: “How the Light Gets In” on Medium, Park Labrea News/Beverly Press, and Kathy Leonardo on the exhibition and benefit.

Gregg Chadwick
The Future Is Woke (left) Scarlet Shadow (right)
40"x30"oil on linen 2018 and 80"x80" oil on linen 2018

“Ring the bells that still can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack, a crack in everything

That’s how the light gets in.”

- Leonard Cohen, Anthem

Art at its best possess an uncanny ability to communicate ideas and feelings that we need to understand. It seems that especially in times of struggle or unrest, art helps us connect to the personhood of others. Art creates dialogue. Dialogue promotes reflective discussion. And reflection can lead to change.

Gregg Chadwick’s new paintings in How the Light Gets In at Audis Husar Fine Art are crafted as reflecting devices that mirror and focus the viewer’s attention on where we are. As Marvin Gaye sang so poignantly — “What’s going on.”

How the Light Gets In: Paintings by Gregg Chadwick
 March 25 — May 11, 2019

Audis Husar Fine Art
Address: 8670 Wilshire Blvd Suite 114, Beverly Hills, CA 90211
Hours: Please contact via phone or email below for an appointment

audishusar@icloud.com

(310) 994–9828

Equality Act Now!

During @HouseJudiciary today, I shared why the #EqualityAct is so personal to me and my family. My child is finally free to be who they are. With that freedom comes a responsibility, for us as legislators, to legislate with love and not fear. pic.twitter.com/VfpiD9aDyY

— Rep. Pramila Jayapal (@RepJayapal) April 2, 2019

As the father of a trans daughter, I agree wholeheartedly with @RepJayapal !
As a country we must "legislate with love not fear" #EqualityAct 🏳️‍🌈 #TransRightsAreHumanRights

— Gregg Chadwick (@greggchadwick) April 2, 2019

RIP Nipsey Hussle

“I'm a 108 bus catching
Blue line train riding, westsider with the young extras” — RIP Nipsey Hussle. pic.twitter.com/5USIexD07N

— LA Metro (@metrolosangeles) April 1, 2019

by Gregg Chadwick

Paintings and sculptures at their best possess an uncanny ability to communicate ideas and feelings that words or other media are hard-pressed to convey. It seems that especially in times of struggle or unrest, art helps us connect to the personhood of others. Art creates dialogue. Dialogue promotes reflective discussion. And reflection can lead to change.

Artists often use their creations as a sort of reflecting device that mirrors and focuses the viewer’s attention on social and political unrest. As Marvin Gaye sang so poignantly - “What’s going on.”

Gregg Chadwick

Call and Echo (left), America’s Sons [From Ferguson to Baltimore] (right)

In my solo exhibition at Audis Husar Fine Art, a group of paintings provide their stories. The young man in Call and Echo has been seen by many viewers as an homage to Emmett Till. Not a description of the unspeakable violence enacted on that young man in the 1950’s, but instead as a human being with personhood, with a face of innocence and cause.

Gregg Chadwick 
Call and Echo

 In dialogue with Call and Echo is America’s Sons (From Ferguson to Baltimore). Inspired by the poetry of Langston Hughes, the words and advocacy of Ta-Nehisi Coates, DeRay McKesson, and Black Lives Matter - my painting turns a spotlight on the stories of young black men who face racial profiling, harassment and often death.  

Gregg Chadwick
America’s Sons (From Ferguson to Baltimore)

With millions of others, I marched on January 21, 2017 in the Women’s March. Our crowd in Los Angeles numbered around 750,000. Again, on January 20, 2018 we hit the streets - the crowd was estimated by L.A. Mayor Garcetti at 600,000.

Gregg Chadwick
The Future Is Woke

In the midst of these peaceful gatherings, I took visual and auditory notes as inspiration for a series of paintings exploring this time of change. I took special note of the signs that were carried by the crowd and documented them in my paintings The Future Is Woke and Still I Rise.

Gregg Chadwick

Still I Rise (left), The Future Is Woke (right)

Gregg Chadwick 
Still I Rise

Martin Luther King Jr. wrote that, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

Gregg Chadwick
The Future Is Woke (left), Scarlet Shadow (right)

In the center of the gallery is my large scale imagined portrait Scarlet Shadow. In a museum or gallery, the eyes of painted portraits follow you as you walk around the room. There is life within them. It’s the artist’s way of drawing you in.

When a Buddhist image is created, only when it is finished are the eyes painted in. The eyes give life to the Buddha or the saint. As artists, we “paint in” the eyes, we paint in the freedom, the spark that injustice threatens to take away. Artists should never forget their own power to do this.

While in Bruges, Belgium, I was intrigued but also taken aback by a series of small portraits of women by the Flemish masters. In the museum these tiny portraits were

Gregg Chadwick
Scarlet Shadow

locked away in an almost inaccessible dark glass case. I decided to create a sort of artistic jailbreak on my return home and set one of the women free on a grand scale. Much like a novelist allows a character to become real in the pages of a book, Scarlet came to life on my canvas.  

On June 26, 2015 Marriage Equality became the law of the land. With hundreds of others we celebrated on the Supreme Court steps. Later that glorious day, I chatted with President Obama’s official photographer Pete Souza in front of the White House which was lit up in rainbow colors in celebration of the LGBTQ community.

Gregg Chadwick 
Arrivals and Departures

While we watched, the Presidential Marine Corps unit arrived. Onboard was President Obama returning from his moving speech at the memorial service for the church folks who were gunned down by a young white supremacist in South Carolina. President Obama sang Amazing Grace that day. Arrivals and departures…

I painted Arrivals and Departures in memory of that day and with the knowledge that the struggle for equality for all continues.

Gregg Chadwick

Platform

Platform is set on an elevated train station in Queens in New York City with a view of Manhattan in the background. An almost impressionistic light fills the scene. In this lyricism, I aim to draw viewers into the painting.

Leonard Cohen wrote in the lyrics to his song Anthem:

“Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.”

The light gets in and draws people deeper into my paintings.

Mulholland Blue is set on the opposite coast in the hills above Los Angeles. Standing on Mulholland and looking down towards the glittering lights below, a blurred trio contemplates the mystery of existence.

Gregg Chadwick
Mulholland Blue

Does the woman in the green dress meet her double and the memory of her lover? Or has time allowed past, present and future to coalesce?

In a more mythic place, a figure stands unclothed in a darkening forest in Indigo Night.

Alone in thought, layers of indigo and true ultramarine create a dream world.  I often buy tubes of genuine lapis lazuli from the London color maker Michael Harding. Lapis lazuli is true ultramarine ground into a crystalline powder and mixed with linseed oil on a stone mill. It is the color blue found in Renaissance skies. Transparent layers of this lapis mark each of my paintings in this exhibit. Sourced in Afghanistan, lapis lazuli reflects the historical tides of trade, conquest, and conflict that ebb and flow across this region and the globe.

Gregg Chadwick
Indigo Night (left), October Path (right)

October Path is part of an ongoing series of artworks about seeking peace and justice in a world in need of harmony. The mountain peaks of Northern Thailand, rising above the city of Chiang Mai, are often caught in an early morning sea of fog. October Path is set in this mist shrouded landscape. Two Buddhist monks in saffron robes appear and then seem to merge with the air. The color of their robes is considered the color of illumination or satori – the highest wisdom.

Gregg Chadwick
Three Secrets

Three Secrets brings us back into our urban world. Summer in the city. Three young women leaving their ballet school near city hall. Secrets shared as they walk. The afternoon light gilds their strides.

Painted images are both timeless and immediate and can cut through the visual white noise that surrounds us. Paintings can speak across oceans and cultures where words are not enough.

-       Gregg Chadwick, March 2019

Notes on Technique:

Ghosts of earlier ideas appear within my artworks and combine with other transparent moments to create a semblance of movement, of time passing. I build a combination of shadow and illumination in each painting to create a sensation of light emanating from the work. I work with oil paint and usually create at least one color in each painting from ground pigments mixed by hand with linseed oil. Linseed oil has the propensity to grow more transparent with age and visible traces of earlier painted marks gradually appear because of this tendency – called pentimenti. I embrace this eventual outcome in my work and incorporate planned and unplanned pentimenti in my process. Unless noted, all of the paintings are created on Belgian linen.

Gregg Chadwick
 Sea of Pearls (Will Rogers)
oil on panel 2018

Gregg Chadwick
Tower of Song (Leonard Cohen)
oil on panel 2018

Gregg Chadwick
We are the Resistance (Carrie Fisher)
oil on panel 2018

How the Light Gets In

Paintings by Gregg Chadwick

 

New solo exhibition of Gregg Chadwick's art 

Audis Husar Fine Art in Beverly Hills. 
Opening Reception - March 30, 2019
5:00 pm Benefit Film Screening - Breaking the Cycle
7:00 pm Art Exhibit and Refreshments 
RSVP   audishusar@icloud.com

 

Audis Husar Fine Art

Address: 8670 Wilshire Blvd Suite 114, Beverly Hills, CA 90211

Hours: Please contact via phone or email below for an appointment
                March 25 - May 11, 2019

Phone: (310) 994-9828

Email: audishusar@yahoo.com

Opening Reception in Conjunction with Benefit Film Screening of Breaking the Cycle

About Arzo Yusuf's Documentary Breaking the Cycle
There are over 500,000 kids in the foster care system in America. Many foster kids are targeted by human traffickers. Los Angeles is the #1 city in the U.S. for the most kids in foster care and #3 for human trafficking. Los Angeles has more than 30,000 kids in foster care. The system is broken and our youth are at high risk of being homeless and trafficked. Breaking the Cycle addresses the issues and creates a call to action. 
Reservations Available at link below:

More on the film and Arzo Yusuf in the Chronicle of Social Change

Sat, Mar 30

5:00 PM

"BREAKING THE CYCLE"