Nikki Maloof’s portraits of imagined animals and humans explore the potential of paint and figuration to convey emotions. The tropical, colorful setting in Still Life (For Dani) creates a warm palette and feeling for her emotional manifestations. Maloof's works tend toward the familiar yet maintain a level of strangeness that produces their emotive quality. 

The Dani in “Still Life (For Dani)” is Maloof’s friend Danielle Orchard, another artist in this print series benefiting City Harvest! “When I was making this series of newspaper still lives, I was interested in the headlines. I wanted them to reflect the creature's anxiety and simultaneously mirror our own anxiety,” Maloof mentions, “Hunger is something that no one should experience in this country yet it is happening all around us. I love that City Harvest provides the means to collect excess food and get it to the people who really need it.”