MONTEREY, CA.- In the exhibition Theater of Memory, Gregg Chadwick presents a series of paintings that explore the ideas of memory and loss. In antiquity and later during the Middle Ages, manuscript pages made from animal hides were often scraped down and used again. Faint traces of the underwritings on these parchments, called palimpsests, survived. Gregg Chadwick’s painting process involves a series of applications and erasures, echoing these layered fragments from the past. At times, he scrapes down entire wet paintings leaving a fragile palimpsest. These under images often bring forth mysterious fragments from Chadwick’s subconscious. In the title painting, Theater of Memory, Gregg Chadwick’s late nephew Luke Chadwick appeared unbidden from the artist’s mind and hand as he worked out a figure in the foreground of a work in progress. Chadwick explains that in the painting his nephew’s faint smile