The Great Dilemma
Price range: $75.00 through $5,000.00
The Great Dilemma 28 x 30″ mixed media
This is Nick and Robert’s second collaboration. See Birthday, which was their first collaboration. With only the scantest idea of a plan, a simple sketch, The Great Dilemma launched with the initial throwing down of the paint, mostly at the direction and assistance of Robert, but executed solely by Nick. 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 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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