If you combined the subject matter of Edward Hopper, the surrealism of René Magritte and the color palette of David Hockney, what would you get? Contemporary, digital artist Alan Richards’ inimitable photomontages.

“There’s no pen, there’s no ink, there’s no nothing like that,” Richards said.

Richards, 79, is a contemporary digital artist, entirely self-taught, based in Roslyn. His pieces are on display at the Sid Jacobson Jewish Community Center in East Hills.

This is the third time Richards has displayed his art at the JCC, having been invited back after his previous two shows. He said he enjoys displaying his works there as it is a good audience for his art.

He describes his art as photomontages, digitally manipulating vintage photos to create his own reimagined telling of the scene. It’s like “developing new stories from what was,” Richards said, while still staying true to the photo’s history.

Typical photos Richards uses depict homefront scenes during World War II, an interest of his he said due to the era’s style and the selflessness of the population.

“These images to me were very, very interesting and they would be lost to history,” Richards said. “I just felt like that generation was different from what we are now, so I look to my father, my grandfather and my past uncles and so on.”

Richards begins his artistic process by sifting through thousands of photos until the right one catches his eye, scouring through public domains.

What he’s looking for is not easy to describe, Richards said, but he finds himself typically seeking out photos of interesting people with apparent displays of self-confidence.

“When I see it, I know it,” Richards said. “I don’t look for beautiful, I don’t look for fat, tall, skinny. I’m just looking for normal people who feel … good about themselves and are real people, not beautiful. I don’t need beautiful.”

From there, a second image – or a reimage – is crafted around the photo as Richards applies his craft to the photo.

To start, he asks himself: “What can I do with this particular person or image? How can I develop it into something different but yet not so different that it’s from a different era?”

Richards’ piece captures the day-to-day aspects of life as in “Counter Intelligence,” which features a man and a woman enjoying beverages at a diner counter.

The art piece is created from a June 1943 photo of a larger diner scene, with Richards’ art singling out just two of the diners at the counter and bringing color and stylization to the black-and-white image.

Some of his work delves into surrealism like “Window Shopping,” which depicts a mother and daughter observing a window display of clothes while cats paw at the next window over filled with water and swimming fish.

Richards created this piece by taking a photo of a mother and daughter shopping and a photo of an old storefront, piecing together the two and adding his imaginative retelling of the scene.

His depiction of regular people in his art is inspired by artists who also take a similar approach in choosing their subject matter, like Hopper, an American painter most known for his piece “Nighthawks” – another artwork depicting a diner scene.

Inspirations for his art style are derived from other artists, though, like English pop artist Hockney and Belgian surrealist artist ​​Magritte.

“It’s a little bit of a combination of all of them,” Richards said.

While Richards was raised in a household where both his mom and dad worked as artists, it was not the path that he initially chose for himself.

He said growing up surrounded by artists, he was always interested in the field but also knew its struggles.

“So art never really came up on my horizon until much later,” Richards said.

Richards was inspired 30 years ago to begin crafting his artistic talents, starting with pencil drawings, but it wasn’t until about 15 years later that he stepped into his art profession.

While his work is on display at the JCC now, Richards said his aspiration is to bring his artwork to an even larger audience and display his pieces in an expanded multimedia format.

Richards’ art will be on display at the JCC through the end of April, with original art pieces or prints available for purchase.