I Am Lonely, 2021
THE BACKSTORY
THE BACKSTORY
Prayer and meditation have always been an important part of how Nicholas has managed his condition, especially during difficult periods when he is experiencing seizures. Drawing on the stained glass and mosaics in the Greek Orthodox church he has attended since childhood, marks a turning point in Nicholas’ approach to abstraction and spiritual subject matter. With help from an assistant, he made this monumental painting by taping off sections of the canvas to work on them individually, creating a grid system that organizes and constrains his marks. The vibrating patchwork of overlapping colors, produced with thousands of tiny brushstrokes, recalls the pointillism of George Seurat, while the structure of the piece invokes the late works of Piet Mondrian. The effect is at once energetic and meditative, like a church window.
Heaven's Real, 2020
Lewis, 2022
THE BACKSTORY
Though not a traditional portrait, this work is named after the influential curator and collector Arthur Lewis, who visited Nicholas at his studio in 2022 around the time of its creation. Highly attuned to his process and the feeling in his hands as he works, Nicholas became intrigued by the smoothness of the surface of the painter’s tape compared to the roughness of canvas. This work features Nicholas’ trademark scrawled circles, but the green background is not what it seems; it is made of layers of painter’s tape, which have been fixed to the canvas with archival glue, creating subtle vertical lines beneath the organic mass of circles. This “not what it seems” quality follows in the name of the work, reflecting a relationship between patron and artist in which each has discovered unexpected layers and beauty in the other.
