Speed of Life

Spent the morning alone in a room with Vermeer at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam -first one in the door - glorious! Rijkswidget - A Masterpiece a Day Much more when I return ...

Statsministeren jobber på flyplassen , originally uploaded by Statsministerens kontor . Stranded by the volcanic cloud over Northern Europe, Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg conducts governmental business on his iPad. Is there an app for running a nation?

Gregg Chadwick Gorgonize (Medusa) from Wordcatcher Just hitting bookstores is my latest collaborative work with Phil Cousineau, Wordcatcher . Phil and I share a love of art and language and this latest book combines Phil's marvelous word histories with my artworks inspired by the word tales. Phil Cousineau and I often work collaboratively. For Wordcatcher I created 25 images inspired by Phil's intriguing descriptions. I spent much of the Fall in my drawing studio with my hands and clothing covered in chalk dust with the smell of wood shavings and sepia inks in the air. The resulting artworks are mainly rendered in ink washes with black and sanguine chalks heightened with white chalk on paper. Gregg Chadwick Duende (Federico Garcia Lorca in Havana) from Wordcatcher Wordcatcher is already garnering praise: “Stake out a claim next to the standard dictionary you use for this less pedantic companion. It contains fewer words but sends up Fourth of July skyrockets on all of them...

Buddha of the Setting Sun (Amida) Gregg Chadwick 40"x32" oil on linen 2010 Private Collection Marina del Rey One in an ongoing series of artworks inspired by the life and poetry of the Japanese Zen monk, poet, scholar and garden designer Muso Soseki. I am indebted to the American poet W.S. Merwin for his masterful versions from the Japanese translations and for his kind words of inspiration to me at the Hammer Museum. Temple of Eternal Light by Muso Soseki (1275 - 1351) English version by W. S. Merwin Original Language Japanese Buddhist : Zen / Chan 14th Century The mountain range the stones in the water all are strange and rare The beautiful landscape as we know belongs to those who are like it The upper worlds the lower worlds originally are one thing There is not a bit of dust there is only this still and full perfect enlightenment Portrait of Zen priest, poet and garden designer Musō Soseki

The Buddha on PBS Narrated by Richard Gere Premiering April 7, 2010 at 8 p.m. (check local listings) Buddhaspotting "Buddha doesn’t look any different from anybody else…Buddhism is not about being special…It is about walking a normal human life with normal human beings, doing normal human things. And this reminds you that you yourself might be a Buddha. At this moment, the person you’re looking at might be one. It’s an interesting practice. Just each person you see as you walk down the street; ‘Buddha? Buddha? Buddha? Buddha? Buddha?’" — Jane Hirshfield, poet PBS The Buddha on Facebook Buddha Spotting on PBS The Buddha on PBS The Buddha Thanks to artist Gregg Chadwick for sharing this photo of one of his paintings in the Buddhaspotting photostream! Studio View Of Fire Sermon www.flickr.com 80"x80" oil on linen 2004

 Martin Luther King Jr.'s Last Speech  "But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough can you see the stars." Martin Luther King, Jr I've Been to the Mountaintop Spoken on April 3rd 1968, Mason Temple (Church of God in Christ Headquarters), Memphis,Tennessee Thank you very kindly, my friends. As I listened to Ralph Abernathy and his eloquent and generous introduction and then thought about myself, I wondered who he was talking about. It's always good to have your closest friend and associate to say something good about you. And Ralph Abernathy is the best friend that I have in the world. I'm delighted to see each of you here tonight in spite of a storm warning. You reveal that you are determined to go on anyhow. Something is happening in Memphis; something is happening in our world. And you know, if I were standing at the beginning of time, with the possibility of taking a kind of general and panoramic view of the whole of human history up to now...

Went to a small club last night with a quartet of friends and found a musical epiphany - Joe Greene and the Heavy Steppers. Much more to come next week ... Joe Greene and the Heavy Steppers on iTunes

Tokyo Lolita , originally uploaded by GreggChadwick . Gregg Chadwick 24"x18" oil on linen 2010

Glen Hansard (the Swell Season) belts out a chilling version of Springsteen's Drive All Night . Recorded live in Milan on February 7, 2010 Edward Norton introduces and sits in with Glen Hansard as he sings Bruce's Drive All Night at Crowdrise benefit on March 22, 2010. Glen Hansard says: "Help me raise money to get my Maasai friends a truck. It will help them protect their lions, get people to health clinics and much more." Donate at: Crowdrise More at: Gli Swell Season, il sole, una chitarra scassata

Peter Clothier Reads at the Standard by Paige Wery's Torchlight (March 23, 2010) Artillery Magazine hosted an intimate event with art writer Peter Clothier last night at the Standard Hotel in Hollywood. Peter began the evening by reading a bit from his new book Persist and then in an honest vulnerability spoke of his personal and artistic challenges to a supportive audience. Peter encouraged the group to face the inhibiting lies that keep us from reaching our full potential in art and life. Peter explained that his personal lie began at his birth when he was delivered with an umbilical cord wrapped around his neck. A skilled, quick thinking nurse cut the cord but Peter spent much of his life held back by the illusion that "I shouldn't be here. I shouldn't be alive." Peter Clothier has left that illusion behind. In Persist and on his continuing book tour, Peter provides vital clues and encouragement learned through meditation and community to his readers. Congrat...

A Reading by Peter Clothier Date/Time: Tuesday March 23 at 7 pm Location: The Standard, Hollywood Please join Peter Clothier from 7 to 10 PM in the Cactus Lounge for this public event Hosted Wine bar for the first hour Artillery Magazine presents a special book reading and signing of Persist: In Praise of the Creative Spirit in a World Gone Mad with Commerce , by writer Peter Clothier. Peter Clothier's Persist: In Praise of the Creative Spirit in a World Gone Mad with Commerce arrives at the perfect time. As the art world tries to reinvent itself in the current economic malaise, Clothier's book inspires us to see the soul and spirit inherent in the creative process. Money may not be the root of all evil but it is the root of a lot of bad art. Peter Clothier challenges artists, writers, actors and filmmakers to value artistic process as a goal in itself rather than a path to wealth and power. Most of all, Clothier urges us to keep on creating - to never give up. The world woul...

Full text of President Obama's remarks, delivered at the White House on the passage of Health Care Reform. March 21, 2010 Good evening, everybody. Tonight, after nearly 100 years of talk and frustration, after decades of trying, and a year of sustained effort and debate, the United States Congress finally declared that America's workers and America's families and America's small businesses deserve the security of knowing that here, in this country, neither illness nor accident should endanger the dreams they've worked a lifetime to achieve. Tonight, at a time when the pundits said it was no longer possible, we rose above the weight of our politics . We pushed back on the undue influence of special interests. We didn't give in to mistrust or to cynicism or to fear. Instead, we proved that we are still a people capable of doing big things and tackling our biggest challenges. We proved that this government - a government of the people and by the people - still wor...

“This is the civil rights act of the 21st century,” said Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, the No. 3 Democrat in the House.

Peter Clothier's new review of my work captures the soul and spirit of my art. "There is an other-worldly quality to Gregg Chadwick's paintings, a sense of liberation from the bonds of gravity that define our physical existence. They celebrate the dedication of the monks they portray and convey some of the quiet joy that freedom from earthly needs invests in them. And yet, too, there is an elegiac tone, a kind of nostalgia for a manifestation of the purely spiritual that most of us can never hope to attain. The paintings are truly captivating in that they invite us irresistibly into their spaces and hold the attention there in their swirl of light and color, suggesting inexhaustible depths of experience for the eye to explore." -Peter Clothier Please read the full review here on Peter's site: Monks by Peter Clothier Peter Clothier has a long and distinguished career as an art writer, novelist and poet. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times , Artscene, ART...

Japanese film artist Hayao Miyazaki has announced that Studio Ghibli's next film, Arrietty the Borrower (Karigurashi no Arrietty ) , will be released in Japan on July 17th 2010. The new film is inspired by Mary Norton's novel The Borrowers. Studio Ghibli's free adaptation of the book will be set in Japan in an anime version of the studio's home neighborhood Tokyo Koganei. Miyazaki will be overseeing the film but Hiromasa Yonebayashi, at 36 years old, directs the feature. On the occasion of Miyazaki's film retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2005 , AO Scott wrote that after viewing a Miyazaki's film "you may find your perception of your own world refreshed, as it might be by a similarly intensive immersion in the oeuvre of Ansel Adams, J. M. W. Turner or Monet. After a while, certain vistas - a rolling meadow dappled with flowers and shadowed by high cumulus clouds, a range of rocky foothills rising toward snow-capped peaks, the fading...

Gerard Julien/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images A Roman bust thought by some French historians to be the only surviving statue of Julius Caesar that was carved during his lifetime. On display at the Musée Départmental de l’Arles Antique. Julius Caesar's assassination in Joseph Mankiewicz' 1953 film version of Shakespeare's play. The Ides of March by C.B. Cavafy Guard, O my soul, against pomp and glory. And if you cannot curb your ambitions, at least pursue them hesitantly, cautiously. And the higher you go, the more searching and careful you need to be. And when you reach your summit, Caesar at last— when you assume the role of someone that famous— then be especially careful as you go out into the street, a conspicuous man of power with your retinue; and should a certain Artemidoros come up to you out of the crowd, bringing a letter, and say hurriedly: “Read this at once. There are things in it important for you to see,” be sure to stop; be sure to postpone all talk or b...

Gregg Chadwick Beauty and Sadness ( 美しさと哀しみと) Utsukushisa to Kanashimi to 57"x103" oil and collage on Japanese screen 2010 Each year the city of Santa Monica sponsors an Art Walk at the Santa Monica Airport. Often the sound of takeoffs and landings from the tarmac mask the quieter sounds of chisel on stone and brush on canvas in the old hangars lining the historic airfield. A community of artists works quietly alongside the hum of rotor blades and the roar of jet engines. Hidden from the world at large on most days, on March 20th 2010 the artists that call the airport home will open their studio doors and let the public into their creative process. I enjoy this day greatly. The crowd of visitors is convivial and eclectic and represents the diversity that I love in Los Angeles. Last year I missed the event as I was traveling and gathering inspiration in Japan. A number of artworks inspired by this journey to Kyoto and Tokyo will be on display. My studio is located at the Santa...

The Kaaba , originally uploaded by GreggChadwick .

Kelly Colbert Sings her new song 600 Acres inspired by Gregg Chadwick's painting Arlington. The song is a poignant tribute to those lost in the war in Iraq and in particular to the memory of the United States Marine Ahn Chanawongse. A bit of Ahn's Story: "Cpl. Kemaphoom A. Chanawongse enlisted shortly after graduating from Waterford (Conn.) High School in 1999 over the objections of his mother, Tan Patchem. “He understood it was dangerous, and he was proud of doing it,” she said. Chanawongse died after his unit came under attack while attempting to secure a bridge. He had been listed as missing until April 16. Chanawongse, who came to the United States from Thailand at age 9, played youth soccer and planned from a young age to join the military. His grandfather is a veteran of the Thai air force. He was known to members of his unit as “Chuckles” for his sense of humor, and one friend said the avid snowboarder was talkative and outgoing: “Every time you turn around, he’s go...

Sumisan 72"x36" oil and monotype on Japanese Torinoko paper 2010 , originally uploaded by GreggChadwick .

Kamakura 36"x48" oil on linen 2010 , originally uploaded by GreggChadwick . Photographed at the Sherry Frumkin Gallery in Santa Monica.

Bob Dylan shakes President Barack Obama's hand following his performance at the "In Performance At The White House: A Celebration Of Music From The Civil Rights Movement" concert in the East Room of the White House, Feb. 9, 2010. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Leonardo da Vinci is an artist whose name is instantly recognizable but whose artwork can seem so familiar to 21st century eyes that the actual paintings feel lost behind a veil of cultural expectations. Paul Strathern's new book, The Artist, the Philosopher, and the Warrior: The Intersecting Lives of da Vinci, Machiavelli, and Borgia and the World They Shaped, allows us to see Leonardo as a living man and artist shaped by his time, friendships and experiences. Strathern's book opens with an epigraph spoken by Orson Welles' character, Harry Lime, in The Third Man . From the vantage point of a ferris wheel high above Vienna, Orson Welles surveys the battered post-war city beneath him and says. "In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace—and what did that pro...

My painting The Poet's Dawn is used as the cover image for Phil Cousineau's new book The Oldest Story in the World . Joseph Campbell, author of The Hero With a Thousand Faces , had this to say about Cousineau's work: "It's just marvelous the way you've demonstrated how similar the journeys in myth are to those in art, literature, movies, and dreams. You've done what all artists and writers must do with the great stuff of myth: you've made it your own. -Joseph Campbell on Phil Cousineau Phil's Website: More Details on Phil Cousineau and His Collaborations With Gregg Chadwick