Jesus Weeps
Price range: $75.00 through $5,000.00
Jesus Weeps 24 x 36″ mixed media on canvas
This is my third collaboration with Nick Cerrato. Nick directed Jesus Weeps, after his idea. I love the symbiotic relationship we are developing with our collaborations. With Cerebral Palsy, Nick is a man of few words. But his words matter. His ideas are powerful and his expression is out of this world. We develop the ideas through color choice and composition; I do very little in the initial laying in of color. In Jesus Weeps, he chose the colors and I drop them down under his magic, beautiful feet. My magic comes when the lay-in is dry. Then I go in an accentuate the forms and tickle out animating features and all the detail, direct the eye a little. I try not to interfere with the initial lay-in. My job is to add clarity and celebrate Nick’s expressive gifts. Jesus Weeps is highly textured, protruding an inch and a half in places.
Jesus Weeps is about Christ’s relationship to Earth and the universe. We have placed Christ as the central force in the universe, whose sacrifice changed Earth’s history forever. He has poured himself out for us and still we don’t listen. Jesus Weeps. The sun and the moon are at his command and His people turn away. Jesus Weeps. Nick’s depiction of Earth as full of fire, is no doubt the understandable product of his condition. Who am I to argue. Earth is one hot mess. As Nick more eloquently puts it, “Jesus gave himself for us and we mocked him while he did it. He is looking down on you and weeping. We created hell on Earth and not Heaven on Earth, like God intended.”
The Great Dilemma 30 x 28" mixed media
Continued . . .
After this stage they let the thing dry. Even with acrylics, it takes a week or two to fully cure. The surface texture is now very sculptural; it's almost a bas relief. Robert's goal in the next stage is to work around and enhance Nicks initial marks, without altering or negating them in any way. Robert describes it as "putting on a glove, without moving the glove in the process," or like putting together a puzzle. Now channeling NETI, Robert sees multitudes of imaginary forms and characters begging to be released from the stone, now the fixed initial layer.
If you look closely at The Great Dilemma, you will see hundreds of features, figures, scenes and objects, in addition to the three principal characters in the drama playing out on and above the Good Earth. One of the major characters reaches upward from a fertile, but injured Earth. He resembles Nick but is meant to represent the struggles of all mankind. He reaches ever upward, appealing to the two major figures in the clouds, who are crouched in judgment, yet tethered to the Earth, doling out whatever justice they see fit from their perspective on high. Are they haggling our fate? Are they good and evil, Adam and Eve? Are they perhaps contrasting aspects of the same both loving and vengeful God? These are just the opening salvo of questions the viewer might ask, in their quest for meaning, in a chaotic universe, filled with more contradictions than answers. But it is also a universe where anything is possible. The two deities or spirits or tricksters don't appear to be diametrically different from one another, but much like humans, who have almost everything in common, they are somehow at odds. Do they fight for love, control? Who is right? Who is wrong? It's hard to know who or what to believe anymore. This world is not much different than our reality.
The minor characters include Vincent Van Gogh (his back to us), Bob Ross, Salvador Dali, to name only a few of the many figures vying for their place in the universe. Arteries pump air from the Earthbound figure. A drainage pipe siphons off a purple ooze from the bleeding Earth, feeding a vivid underworld. Among the many entities, scattered throughout, there are fish, birds, a cross, spooks, skeletons, snails, rabbits, lizards, zombies, wizards, half-faces, ghouls, stars, monsters, a knife, a unicorn, beautiful women, the Milky Way, dripping appendages, and always a multitude of probing eyes.
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