Vulture / Vanitas

A sleeper lies under a blanket of dollar bills while a vulture wheels in from a gold sky. Three old pictures fold into one: the vanitas, the still-life reminder that death is coming; the money, heaped up and useless to the dying; the carrion bird, patient overhead. Its companion pages in the notebook gather his reading on Ivan Boesky and a line he copied out, "Money is nothing but the vehicle for a movement in which everything else that is not in motion is completely extinguished." Vulture capitalism, painted as a deathbed.

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.