Speed of Life

Full text of Barack Obama's "A More Perfect Union" speech delivered on March 18, 2008 at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia. "We the people, in order to form a more perfect union." Two hundred and twenty one years ago, in a hall that still stands across the street, a group of men gathered and, with these simple words, launched America's improbable experiment in democracy. Farmers and scholars; statesmen and patriots who had traveled across an ocean to escape tyranny and persecution finally made real their declaration of independence at a Philadelphia convention that lasted through the spring of 1787. The document they produced was eventually signed but ultimately unfinished. It was stained by this nation's original sin of slavery, a question that divided the colonies and brought the convention to a stalemate until the founders chose to allow the slave trade to continue for at least twenty more years, and to leave any final resolution to future ...

Colors 40"x30" oil on linen

As the violent Chinese crackdown in Tibet continues, the Dalai Lama says, ""Whether intentionally or unintentionally, some cultural genocide is taking place. There is some kind of discrimination: the Tibetans in their own land quite often are treated as second-class citizens." Lhadon is blogging from China on the protests in Tibet and the Chinese reaction. Important reading in the run up to the summer Olympics: beijingwideopen

A few things in the works: Coming out in May is Phil Cousineau's new book, Stoking the Creative Fires . My painting is illustrated on the cover and the book also contains two interviews with me about the creative process as well as two other paintings. Cousineau's Stoking the Creative Fires Inquiring Mind , a Berkeley based journal, will be using one of my paintings, A Balance of Shadows in their upcoming issue. I nquiring Mind An artist in Italy has created a project based on Raymond Carver's poem, The Painter and the Fish . If you go to the project website (link below), you'll see he includes my thoughts on Raymond Carver. “A SORT OF ARTISTIC EPIPHANY” Febbraio 15, 2008, 9:21 pm Archiviato in: Contorni | Tag: epifania, epiphany, Gregg Chadwick, Raymond Carver “While I’m working on an artwork I don’t just settle for the middle ground or main image. I work the edges and the spaces between. I am hoping to create works that breathe across the whole surface. I desire t...

-thanks to earthgoat

Drama and Desire: Japanese Paintings from the Floating World 1690-1850 opened Friday at the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco and runs through April 2008. The exhibition of Japanese paintings from the permanent collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston has traveled from Kobe, Japan to Nagoya to Tokyo to the Kimbell Museum then back to their usual home in Boston and on to Ontario and now San Francisco. The exhibition is stunning. Hokusai's ukiyo-e woodcuts may be quite familiar but the chance to see his paintings on silk was revelatory. Two paintings in particular stood out: Hokusai's Woman Looking at Herself in a Mirror (Kyômen bijin zu) is a work of extreme elegance and beauty. A woman stands before a mirror, a cherry seductively lolls in her mouth, and in her right hand she holds a letter. A poem inscribed on the scroll by the poet Shima Tokki reads: Does that letter from the man she waits for promise a summer's night out? Katsushika Hokusai, Japanese, 1760–1849 Wo...