Friday, February 17, 2023
Wednesday, February 15, 2023
Poolside
Legs dangling in an aquamarine pool, drink in hand, and a book open to the right page. What is she reading? Perhaps because he was born on this day in 1946, French Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard's book "Happiness: "A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill" which explores how to develop happiness as a skill that includes acceptance of pain and struggle through a process of understanding, meditation, and breath.
Or perhaps her book is a collection of Emily Dickinson's poetry?
"Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all,
And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.
I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me."
Note - if you are in town for the @friezeofficial Art Fair at the Santa Monica Airport, I will have my studio open @18thstreetarts at the Airport during fair hours. Please stop by and say Hello.
#art #SantaMonica #Frieze #Books #Hope #Beauty #ContemporaryArt #greggchadwick
Bruce Springsteen - "If I Was the Priest" for Valentine's Day in Houston
‘If I Was the Priest,’ not played in concert by Springsteen since ’72, makes it into Houston setlist https://t.co/pA7Rf7qd8H
— Gregg Chadwick (@greggchadwick) February 15, 2023
Review: Bruce Springsteen at Houston’s Toyota Center offers reflective songs alongside old favorites https://t.co/pY8EDyDKLE
— Gregg Chadwick (@greggchadwick) February 15, 2023
Tuesday, February 07, 2023
President Biden's State of the Union Address - Feb 7, 2023
Wow that was a huge moment — Biden uses the Republican boos and jeers to go off script and strong-arm them into taking Medicare/Social Security cuts off the table
— Kate Riga (@Kate_Riga24) February 8, 2023
What a brilliant, refreshing speech that revives true American populism—progressive democratic populism, not right-wing authoritarian fake-populism. Biden sounds Rooseveltian and is taking American politics by storm.
— Rep. Jamie Raskin (@RepRaskin) February 8, 2023
Tonight, I fulfilled my constitutional duty to report on the state of the nation.
— President Biden (@POTUS) February 8, 2023
And here is my report.
Because of the Soul of this nation –
Because of the backbone of this nation –
Because of the people of this nation –
The State of the Union is strong.
U2's Bono with Mr. Pelosi In the House Chamber at the State of the Union. I love this picture.❤️❤️ pic.twitter.com/uXHfFfjU3v
— SusieTX (@SusanTXBlue) February 8, 2023
Love Biden’s Energy! https://t.co/C6ZWQJVrSk
— Gregg Chadwick (@greggchadwick) February 8, 2023
Friday, February 03, 2023
Tuesday, January 10, 2023
Changes - David Bowie
Changes - David Bowie
41.5"x25.5"pastel on paper 2016
On January 8, 1935 Elvis Presley was born in Tupelo, Mississippi and in Brixton, London on January 8, 1947, David Bowie was born.
My artwork looks back on Bowie when he released his haunting song "Where Are We Now?", which is as much a painting in soft greys as it is a song. A quiet rhythm of drums and synth warp and weft with minor key piano chords and Bowie's plaintive, elegiac voice.
Set in a Berlin of memory and dream, Bowie's voice and lyrics question the themes of human bondage, release, freedom, doubt, ageing, and death. Bowie lived in West Berlin between 1976 and 1979 in the Schöneberg district in a house with Iggy Pop while Brian Eno and Tony Visconti were helping record Bowie's Berlin trilogy of albums Low, Heroes, and Lodger in the now legendary Hansa Studios. Years later, Bowie looks back in "Where Are We Now?" and echoes his words about Low, "Berlin has the strange ability to make you write only the important things. Anything else you don't mention."
The political and the personal merge in my pastel painting of Bowie. We are left with existential questions and are reminded that bodies age, marriages end, friendships dissolve and memories fade. But Bowie's quietly defiant voice does not give in to any dying of the light.
For a couple of moments in the immensity of time, we were one.#EternalLove #BowieForever pic.twitter.com/eUK4sjWFc2
— Iman Abdulmajid (@The_Real_IMAN) January 10, 2023
Late Light
Jordaan Window (Coffee in Amsterdam)
25cm x 25cm oil on wood 2010
Late Light
by Philip Levine
(January 10, 1928 - 2015)
Rain filled the streets
once a year, rising almost
to door and window sills,
battering walls and roofs
until it cleaned away the mess
we'd made. My father told
me this, he told me it ran
downtown and spilled into
the river, which in turn
emptied finally into the sea.
He said this only once
while I sat on the arm
of his chair and stared out
at the banks of gray snow
melting as the March rain
streaked past. All the rest
of that day passed on
into childhood, into nothing,
or perhaps some portion hung
on in a tiny corner of thought.
Perhaps a clot of cinders
that peppered the front yard
clung to a spar of old weed
or the concrete lip of the curb
and worked its way back under
the new growth spring brought
and is a part of that yard
still. Perhaps light falling
on distant houses becomes
those houses, hunching them
down at dusk like sheep
browsing on a far hillside,
or at daybreak gilds
the roofs until they groan
under the new weight, or
after rain lifts haloes
of steam from the rinsed,
white aluminum siding,
and those houses and all
they contain live that day
in the sight of heaven.
II
In the blue, winking light
of the International Institute
of Social Revolution
I fell asleep one afternoon
over a book of memoirs
of a Spanish priest who'd
served his own private faith
in a long forgotten war.
An Anarchist and a Catholic,
his remembrances moved
inexplicably from Castilian
to Catalan, a language I
couldn't follow. That dust,
fine and gray, peculiar
to libraries, slipped
between the glossy pages
and my sight, a slow darkness
calmed me, and I forgot
the agony of those men
I'd come to love, forgot
the battles lost and won,
forgot the final trek
over hopeless mountain roads,
defeat, surrender, the vows
to live on. I slept until
the lights came on and off.
A girl was prodding my arm,
for the place was closing.
A slender Indonesian girl
in sweater and American jeans,
her black hair falling
almost to my eyes, she told
me in perfect English
that I could come back,
and she swept up into a folder
the yellowing newspaper stories
and photos spilled out before
me on the desk, the little
chronicles of death themselves
curling and blurring
into death, and took away
the book still unfinished
of a man more confused
even than I, and switched off
the light, and left me alone.
III
In June of 1975 I wakened
one late afternoon in Amsterdam
in a dim corner of a library.
I had fallen asleep over a book
and was roused by a young girl
whose hand lay on my hand.
I turned my head up and stared
into her brown eyes, deep
and gleaming. She was crying.
For a second I was confused
and started to speak, to offer
some comfort or aid, but I
kept still, for she was crying
for me, for the knowledge
that I had wakened to a life
in which loss was final.
I closed my eyes a moment.
When I opened them she'd gone,
the place was dark. I went
out into the golden sunlight;
the cobbled streets gleamed
as after rain, the street cafes
crowded and alive. Not
far off the great bell
of the Westerkirk tolled
in the early evening. I thought
of my oldest son, who years
before had sailed from here
into an unknown life in Sweden,
a life which failed, of how
he'd gone alone to Copenhagen,
Bremen, where he'd loaded trains,
Hamburg, Munich, and finally
-- sick and weary -- he'd returned
to us. He slept in a corner
of the living room for days,
and woke gaunt and quiet,
still only seventeen, his face
in its own shadows. I thought
of my father on the run
from an older war, and wondered
had he passed through Amsterdam,
had he stood, as I did now,
gazing up at the pale sky,
distant and opaque, for the sign
that never comes. Had he drifted
in the same winds of doubt
and change to another continent,
another life, a family, some
years of peace, an early death.
I walked on by myself for miles
and still the light hung on
as though the day would
never end. The gray canals
darkened slowly, the sky
above the high, narrow houses
deepened into blue, and one
by one the stars began
their singular voyages.
Monday, January 09, 2023
iPhone - Gamechange
by Gregg Chadwick
Gregg Chadwick
The Station Agent (detail)
54"x54" oil on linen 2014
Private Collection, Los Angeles, California
Featured at the LA Art Show 2015 - LA Convention Center and illustrated in the catalog. January 14-18, 2015
In his biography of Apple cofounder Steve Jobs, biographer Walter Isaacson describes the unveiling of the iPhone on January 9, 2007 at Macworld in San Francisco:
"Every once in a while a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything," Steve Jobs said. "Today we are introducing three revolutionary products," Jobs continued. "The first one is a widescreen iPod with touch controls. The second is a revolutionary mobile phone. The third is a breakthrough Internet communications device ... Are you getting it? These are not three separate devices, this is one device, and we are calling it the iPhone."
In my paintings, I have often depicted communication devices. From phone booths in Tokyo and New York City, to a glowing computer lighting my daughter Cassiel in our Santa Monica home - people interacting with machines intrigues me artistically. In my graduate show at NYU, a public phone stands sentinel on an urban night in my painting "Oak Knoll Sandwich". In my more recent artworks "iPhone Light"and "The Station Agent" figures look down at their glowing screens as they make their way through life. I remember riding the subway in Manhattan in the early 1980s and looking across the rail car at the rows of seated figures looking down avoiding an unwanted gaze. Now, with cell phones in hand the downward gaze is ubiquitous across the world. Since the unveiling of the iPhone in 2007, we carry in our pockets and bags a device that is phone, music player, and computer in one. Thanks to the developments spurred on by the iPhone we are connected and protected. It is the availability of video on our phones that allows us to keep track of the abuse of force by unruly cops and get off my lawn civil no-gooders. And we can celebrate life by recording and posting silly moments of connection on Tik Tok and IG Reels. For many of us, all of life has become a film as we listen to the soundtrack of our journey across time via the music library in our phone. And sometimes we have to join Lizzo and ask - "Where the hell is my phone?"
iPhone Light
6"x4" oil on zinc 2013
Julie Weiss Collection, Los Angeles, California
Oak Knoll Sandwich
72"x96" oil on linen 1986
Private Collection, New York City
Sunday, January 08, 2023
Happy Birthday Elvis!
“Gregg Chadwick takes the opposite stance in the oil-on-linen 'Elvis Presley (Suspicion).' Here, a familiar depiction of the singer is rendered in blurry, shadowy lines, as if his memory is slowly fading and becoming the stuff of rumor and legend tending toward oblivion.”- Fredric Koeppel, The Commercial Appeal, Memphis, Tennessee
Since my artwork was included in a series of Elvis themed exhibitions at the L. Ross Gallery in Memphis, Tennessee, I have been reading and re-reading Ray Connolly’s book Being Elvis: A Lonely Life which deftly examines Elvis’ life through the lens of Memphis in the 1940’s and 1950’s. Childhood poverty and class aspirations spurred Elvis on in a way that left no room for error in his art but left his life dangerously open to misfortune and eventual tragedy.At the Mississippi-Alabama Fair and Dairy Show in Tupelo, Mississippi on September 26, 1956, Elvis played a powerful, homecoming show in the town where he was born in a two-room shack 21 years before on January 8, 1935. Elvis had left Tupelo when he was thirteen. In the interim, Elvis had become Tupelo’s most famous person. As Ray Connolly recounts in Being Elvis: A Lonely Life : “Elvis put on a special show that day…It was staged outside the fairgrounds in front of a large tent, and, as he sang in the afternoon show, he could see over in the background, a long freight train rolling past.” Starting on that day, as the concert closed, Elvis and the band slipped off stage through a trapdoor. No encores that day nor in the future. Instead an announcer would express over the PA system that “Elvis has left the building.”
Saturday, January 07, 2023
Animal Stories
by Gregg Chadwick
Gregg Chadwick
Arctic Fox
30”x30” oil on linen 2020
Steph Yoon Collection, Irvine, California
When I was in elementary school, I felt a great connection to the natural world and would often wander into the woods near our home to poke around in the creeks to watch tadpoles scurry about and find newts hidden under rocks. On trips to the public library, I would come home with stacks of books on animal life. There was so much to discover and I was determined to learn how to draw animals to learn more about them. I would take a sketchbook and drawing pencils to the zoo to try and capture the animals I encountered on my visits. On trips to the National Gallery in Washington DC, it was the animals in paintings by Delacroix and Rubens that drew me in. Over the years, I have continued to create artworks about animals and recently have created a series of paintings that shed light on climate change, the beauty of the natural world, and our place with other species. My oil on linen artwork "Arctic Fox" is part of this ongoing series and brings the natural world directly into our vision. In art and myth the fox holds a special place. From Aesop's Fables, to Reynard the Fox, to the foxes gathering on New Year's Eve in Hiroshige's "New Year’s Eve Foxfires at the Changing Tree, Oji", this crafty animal symbolizes intelligence and cunning over brute strength.
We are richer because of the animals in our midst. I first became aware of the fragile nature of our planet as an eight year old. For Christmas one year, I asked my parents for the book “Wildlife in Danger” published by the IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature). They are still an important organization providing information, plans, and hope for our endangered earth. Worried about the environment as a kid, I drew pictures of animals constantly.
Somehow in my childhood stacks of books, I missed Gerald Durrell's marvelous "My Family and Other Animals." Prompted by viewing the Masterpiece Theater production "The Durrells in Corfu" based on Gerald Durrell's "My Family and Other Animals" and its two sequels, I recently read Gerald's childhood memories for the first time. The television series deftly translates Gerald's vivid prose into light soaked images. Durrell's book is a witty look into five years of his childhood on the island of Corfu. While his older brother, author Lawrence Durrell, was just beginning to make his way in the literary world and his sister Margo was learning about love and life, Gerald was digging in the dirt looking for animal life. Gerald created a home grown menagerie at their rented villa and began a lifelong appreciation of nature and the environment.
Gerald Durrell was born on January 7, 1925 in India to British parents. His father died in 1928, creating an unsettled life for Durrell's mother who moved the family around England before arriving in Corfu, where Gerald spent the formative years of his childhood. As detailed humorously in "My Family and Other Animals" a series of private tutors attempted to educate the young Gerald, but natural history and his growing collection of creatures from scorpions to owls provided his main intellectual interest. In his adult life after World War II, Gerald went on numerous wildlife expeditions and wrote 37 books including "My Family and Other Animals", "A Zoo in My Luggage", and "The Mockery Bird." With proceeds from his bestselling books, in 1959 Gerald founded the Jersey Zoological Park and then in 1963 the Jersey Wildlife Preservation Trust with the goal of breeding endangered species. Gerald received the Order of the British Empire in 1982 and was featured in the United Nations' Roll of Honor for Environmental Achievement in 1988.
As we collectively celebrate our beautiful planet, we are reminded by the words and actions of forward thinking environmentalists, such as Gerald Durrell and Greta Thunberg, of the urgent need to Act On Climate now. We must recommit ourselves to promoting and enacting solutions that will safeguard our planet for generations to come.Sea Bear, Panda's Thumb, Panthera Leo, Red Fox
Each 7”x5” oil on wood 2021
Friday, January 06, 2023
Hold the Line: We the People Prevailed - Courage Under Fire - From the Civil War to January 6th
by Gregg Chadwick
I grew up in a military family. My father was a career officer in the United States Marine Corps. Many of my friends from my school days were also military dependents. In particular, my buddy Mark Stephens embodied the ethos of duty and fidelity that the Corps presented to us. His dad was also in the Marine Corps and fought in Vietnam as an artillery officer. Mark joined the Navy after we graduated from Lake Braddock Secondary School in Burke, Virginia. I remember him visiting me while I was a student at UCLA dressed for shore leave in his Navy dixie cup sailor cap and service uniform. Behind his welcoming bonhomie, Mark carries a fierce intellect. Befitting his future position as a history instructor at Chabot College in California, you needed to know your stuff if you were going to engage in debate with Mark. Especially military history, the US Civil War, and Monty Python. Mark would take on our Social Studies teachers if they dared enter into Lost Cause apologetics when it came to the Confederacy. We were in Virginia, but for Mark like me, the preservation of the Union was the real story of the Civil War.
Today marks two years since a violent mob of insurrectionists—sanctioned by the former President—descended on the Capitol in an armed and deadly effort to halt the peaceful transfer of power. To this day, Trump continues his attempt to poison American democracy with his Big Lie. In a rebuke to the former guy, President Biden today said “Two years ago on Jan. 6, our democracy was attacked. There’s no other way of saying it. All of it was fueled by the lies about the 2020 election. But on this day two years ago, our democracy held because we the people, as the Constitution refers to us, did not flinch. We the people endured. We the people prevailed.”
Watching the violence unfold at the Capitol via livestream on January 6, 2021, I was struck by the incredible heroism of the Capitol police and the DC police officers who fought against the brutal mob for hours to save our democracy. Our democracy held because they put their lives on the line in service to a positive ideal. During a ceremony at the White House, President Biden awarded a group of those officers with medals as he honored their courage during the January 6 insurrection.
Thanks to the Capitol and DC police officers, we held the line.
Thursday, January 05, 2023
Reaching for Light on Miyazaki's Birthday
by Gregg Chadwick
Gregg Chadwick
Tokyo (Shibuya Crossing)
30”x22” monotype on paper 2023
Since I was a kid, I have spent a number of holiday seasons in Japan. The time from just before Christmas to just after New Year's Day is a magical time in Japan. Families gather from around the country as students and workers take time off and return to their homes for celebrations of the season. The food is marvelous, the conversations are rich, and the moments are precious. My monotype on paper "Tokyo (Shibuya Crossing)" is an artistic nod to my memories of Japan. As we move into 2023, I wish you a Happy Year of the Rabbit! And I would like to wish a warm Happy Birthday to artist and filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki who was born on this day in 1941.
Pixar animator Enrico Casarosa said, "Miyazaki has this uncanny ability to add a childish sense of wonder to his stories. He’s able to make us feel like little kids again."
Spirited Away
60"x48"oil on linen 2019
December Eyes/ Tokyo
72"x24" oil on silk 2011
Private Collection, Venice, California