Christmas at Gump’s

These darkly comic works comprised my first series of digital collage. Populated with lavish jewels and expensive apparel and trinkets, the source photographs were taken with acquisitive desperation in 2017 at San Francisco’s “Gump’s Emporium.” Attempting to use Photoshop to prepare images for a gallerist, I was unable to learn cutting/pasting due to my ADD. As I erased and blended layers, collages with a painterly quality emerged, alluding to Dutch still-life masterpieces – paintings which likewise portrayed luxuries available only to the wealthy, infusing them with grim mortality.