Derek Gores has been a member artist at Gallery 14 for some four years now, where a month-long solo show featuring 20 of his collage artworks, that he calls “Tropicollage,” opens with a 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. reception on Feb. 5 during downtown Vero’s First Friday Gallery Stroll.
For “Tropicollage” Gores spent “four or five months” creating new collages inspired by “the seaside life.”
“In the past, my work has been more black-and-white, high-fashion subjects. With this show I was inspired by sea, sun and colorful beauty,” he says.
All of the collages on display are of torn and cut paper glued onto canvas. Gores’ materials include pages pulled from fashion and travel magazines, as well as out-of-date atlases.
“I start with a rough sketch. I use all the tricks at my disposal, enlarging digitally, etcetera.”
Gores says that his imagery comes from “all kinds of sources.” He often culls his principal image from photos he takes himself, but he also finds subject matter in the photos of fashion photographers and photojournalists.
“When I was a young artist of 18, I did photo realist pencil renderings. The work I do now is a reconciliation with that.”
Today the female form is Gores’ favored subject. When clothed, the women in his collages sport chic fashions and leggy good looks. His nudes are reminiscent of the discreet eroticism of vintage Playboy magazines.
In his female subjects, Gores says he depicts “the strong woman.”
“I show women during their independent moments – a woman is not a prop for a man in the scene.”
One of the recognizable women that recurs in his oeuvre is Marilyn Monroe, and this show includes an image of Monroe reading a book. At 60 inches tall and 72 inches wide, it is sure to grab your attention. Titled “Marilyn Incognito,” the blonde icon is shown curled in an upholstered armchair with her legs flung over one of its padded arms. She is clad in a strappy blue dress, and her high heels teeter from her toe tips as though, at any moment, Monroe might let them fall to the floor.
In real life Monroe was an avid reader. A 1999 Christie’s auction of her personal effects included her library of some 400 books, including the title of the book she is reading in Gores’ constructed image, “How to Travel Incognito” by Ludwig Bemelmans (best known for his “Madeline” children’s series).
The original images that Gores based his Marilyn on are from a series of 1953 publicity photos snapped by gossip columnist Earl Wilson in Monroe’s room at the Beverly Hills Hotel.
Monroe was staying at the hotel for a fête celebrating Charles Coburn, her co-star in “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.” The book she is reading in Wilson’s original photos is Wilson’s own compilation of jokes, “Look Who’s Abroad Now.”
Gores says that he likes “a heroic pose, a daring confrontation” in his figural work, and his 48-inch-high collage “Between Confrontations” has all that and then some.
It represents a semi-nude woman, whose face bears a passing resemblance to the Biblical heroine in Vienna Secessionist Gustav Klimt’s kinky 1901 painting, “Judith with the Head of Holofernes.” Like Judith, Gores’ square-jawed woman is shown with eyes nearly shut and mouth open enough to convey an expression of ecstasy.
Gores’ nude is propped against a background of blue roses that bump against her armless sides like rising seltzer bubbles. Interspersed throughout the composition, smaller images of femmes fatales echo the main figure’s theme, while snippets of bold, black-and-white typefaces and striped pattern inject a graphic spark in the otherwise photographic image.
Other, specifically tropical, settings in the group of collages include the 24-inch square “Sunshine All Day” depicting a white ibis strolling before a pink-mauve wall. The 48-inch-high “Tropical Game” is an explosion of imagery in warm pinks and oranges that promises fun in a sunny clime – swimmers, fashion models and a beautiful woman’s face garlanded with fleshy roses.
Gores has hit the big time, with mural-sized commissions for the Hotel Bel-Air in Los Angeles, where he was the hotel’s first visiting artist in February 2020, Loew’s Miami Beach Hotel, and Porsche.
Gores has come a long way from his boyhood and teen years in Satellite Beach. His father, Richard Gores, moved the family there in 1981 from Massachusetts, where Derek spent the first decade of his life.
In his youth Richard Gores wanted to be an artist and attended Rhode Island School of Design for only a couple of years before dropping out to pursue a degree in journalism from Syracuse University.
Says Gores, “Then dad got a job as a nursery florist, and that led to his opening his own shop, first in Massachusetts, and then in Brevard County. He finally had five or six shops.”
Richard Gores died at the age of 61 in 2002, but during his relatively brief life set an example for Derek that has borne bountiful returns.
“My dad was my first mentor,” Gores says. “My dad got to use his art training, his sense of the artistic, and his business acumen. Flower arrangements are artistic and beautiful, but running a floral business is an art and a science.”
Another early mentor showed Gores what it takes to be a professional artist.
“In high school I was awarded a workshop to study with Frits Van Eeden. He had passion and ability; he was internationally known. He was from Holland and sent work back to his gallery there. He loved the Space Coast. He felt vital here; I feel vital here. When I first moved back to this area in 2007, he was the first person that I visited.”
Van Eeden, by the way, is still kicking. His name became synonymous with the Renee Foosaner Education Center in Eau Gallie, the artsy neighborhood of Melbourne, where he taught for around 40 years before returning to the Netherlands permanently in 2021 to be near his extended family.
The younger Gores’ prowess in his high school art classes garnered him a college scholarship.
Like his father, Gores chose to attend RISD, studying illustration and earning a BFA in 1993.
After graduation Gores worked for Liquid Blue, a T-shirt design company with an extensive line of Grateful Dead merchandise. One of the company’s popular shirts featured Gores’ design of the Dead’s iconic dancing bears climbing an endless stairway atop an Escher-esque building.
Gores also did freelance work for Sony and Live Nation Entertainment, creating illustrations and advertising design for solo pop musicians, rock bands and other entertainers. Still later he did work for the “sports realm,” as he puts it.
“Of course, my signature was never on any of those works,” says Gores. “I was 37 years old before I took the leap into becoming a fine artist.”
The 51-year-old now keeps his studio in Melbourne, in the vicinity of Frits Van Eeden’s old stomping ground.
Says Gores, “I love my Eau Gallie Arts District.”
“Tropicollage” is on view through Feb. 25 at Gallery 14 in the Downtown Historic Arts District of Vero Beach.
Photo by Kaila Jones
