What do you think of the frame? I think it works for this one.

Continued . . .

The goal here is to harness Nick's magnificent gift, which is his freedom. These brilliant sweeps of paint and Nick's expressive mark making is how the painting begins. Nick's ability to get out of his own way is off the charts, partly because he has Cerebral Palsy and can only make spontaneous, impulsive marks; marks most abstract expressionists would die to be able to make. The other thing you need to know about Nick is he has an artist's eye and an artist's soul. There is no room for the slightest contrivance or fakery. His job is to strike, then get out of the way. All artists are two people: the one who paints and the other to tell him when to stop. Nick is a pure abstract expressionist, in the truest sense of the word. Robert's role in this stage is to furnish paint and direct the general contours of the map they had in mind, and otherwise to simply allow Nick to do his magic. There is a general consensus between the two as to when enough is enough.

The goal here is to harness Nick's magnificent gift, which is his freedom. These brilliant sweeps of paint and Nick's expressive mark making is how the King of the Metaverse begins. Nick's ability to get out of his own way is off the charts, partly because he has Cerebral Palsy and can only make spontaneous, impulsive marks; marks most abstract expressionists would die to be able to make. The other thing you need to know about Nick is he has an artist's eye and an artist's soul. There is no room for the slightest contrivance or fakery. His job is to strike, then get out of the way. All artists are two people: the one who paints and the other to tell him when to stop. Nick is a pure abstract expressionist, in the truest sense of the word. Robert's role in this stage is to furnish paint and direct the general contours of the map they had in mind, and otherwise to simply allow Nick to do his magic. There is a general consensus between the two as to when enough is enough.

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, and input from Nick, Robert begins to pull out the multitudes of imaginary forms and characters begging to be released from the stone, now the fixed initial layer.

If you look closely at King of the Metaverse, you will notice 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. The King faces it squarely. We see as stick figure unnoticed between the two main objects, the Lion and the He is transparent, almost a stick figure. Nick but is meant to represent the struggles of all mankind. Here he is invisible in his appeals to the powers that be. Why is no one listening to us?  Is God too busy with his larger plans to bother with our individual concerns? 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.

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