Aardvark

A colonial banquet painted as one of Goya's black dreams. Sashed dignitaries and gowned women crowd a table set with a roast bird, while a gaunt, long-snouted figure and an African woman with a staff hover at the edges. The letter A runs the chain: aardvark, the earth-pig, to Afrikaner, to the Dutch East India Company, the Great Trek, Blood River, apartheid. The feast of empire, the bill still unpaid.

James Formichella is a Gloucester painter who works by association. Each of these canvases has a companion in An Alphabetical Caprice, a notebook he compiled from his working notes and source clippings: an A to Z in which every letter spirals off into art history, etymology, money, madness, and mortality. He came to Gloucester from Denver in 1978 for the plein-air light, trained in oil under John C. Terelak, and is an associate member of the North Shore Arts Association.

One of a kind. Giclée on stretched canvas, a flat $180 regardless of size. Fish City Studios, 39 Main St, Gloucester. Leaves the gallery ready to hang.