Painted in 2016 before his first election, I was struck by his hand gestures , employed to shore up his inarticulate speeches. The disembodied hands spell out in ASL “you’re fired,” his most famous quotation, but the ones creeping out from the bottom are there “because his hands are often not where they should be.” I modeled his hair on a thumb print, which turned out to be prophetic when he ws fingerprinted. The roulette wheels remind one of his failed casinos and Russian Roulette. But the whole effect adds up to the look of a Tarot card, where the highest Trump Card is the Fool!

60" x 36"