Vanitas Variants is a series of drawings that reworks the tradition of vanitas painting. Artists, such as the Flemish painters of the 18^th Century, were concerned with representing the fleeting nature of life while reflecting the values of the time as represented by a personal scene comprised of domestic objects. The drawings of Vanitas Variants are intentionally hermetic and at times analytic in their composition and use of scale (the objects depicted appear, at times, larger than life). Dramatic tensions arise and provoke abstract narratives. The sense of the figure ground relation is unusual–the perspective is one of looking downward at objects as they emerge from an abstract space. Through collection, juxtaposition, perspective, scale and style, the works explore symbolic processes that figure ideas of power, masculinity, consumption, possession, sensuality and subjective expression within an expanding and shifting, globalized economy.