In my teen years I was obsessed with this Marlene Dietrich still from the classic western 'Destry Rides Again' (1939). It's the movie that bore the famous line "there's gold in them thar hills." Between 1987- 1989 I made dozens of works using this lush, highly contrasted image of her as the saloon singer ‘Frenchy.’ In 2010 I was cataloguing my archive and I thought "I could make these now digitally, so why not try and see how they turn out?" So I did, with a 21 year gap. I made 3 new ones to add to the series without touching a brush or cutting up bits of paper. Sometimes you're simply not done, for however long it takes. A few weeks into joining the Crypto Art/NFT space I uploaded one not expecting much - and it quickly sold out. This one is number 14 in the series. I went ham in a brand new horizontal format. This gave me a lot more room to spread out and add many details to this piece inspired by Japanese culture old and new, mixed with butterflies and moths to turn Marlene a creature reminiscent of one of my favourite vintage B movies like ‘Godzilla versus Mothra.’ This is directly inspired by Japanese pop culture and fashion, from the period I worked in some capacity on ‘Fruits’ an internationally touring exhibition of magazine/book publisher Shoichi Aoki’s photos, which documented the Harajuku fashion movement, based in the Shibuya District, Tokyo. At this same time Gwen Stefani had just released the heavily Harajuku-influenced hit album “Love Angel Music Baby’ which I was coincidentally listening to as I worked on that job. All those things continue to have a significant influence on me.