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 13 in the series. This piece is a re-imagining of the perception and resultant atmosphere of production, innovation and technology as it happened in a heady time gone by. Marlene Dietrich becomes a Marie Antoinette-like goddess presiding over modern marketing: ‘let them eat tech.’ It expresses in a visual frisson the excitement of evocative and sometimes onomatopoeic words from advertising inspired by a favourite track from the late 1980s ‘We’ll be Right Back’ by Stienski & Mass Media:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1lZ819y7V4&ab_channel=MarkGardner

As usual snippets have been scavenged from my vast archives which have accumulated over 30+ years as an artist, professional designer and collector. I repurpose them, integrating bits and pieces into my digital collage works.