Filed Under: "flowers"

Acrylic on canvas (20″ x 16″), mid-1990s, one of countless unpublished and previously uncirculated (and mischievous and unfathomable) late-life works in the Flora archives.

Spot illustration, Portrait of a Great American, a 1943 CBS radio trade circular about singer Kate Smith’s prowess raising money for war bonds. Most of the booklet’s illustrations were reproduced in The Sweetly Diabolic Art of Jim Flora, but this perky flower was omitted.

Tempera illustration from Sherwood Walks Home (1966), part of the James Flora Papers in the Kerlan children’s literature collection at the University of Minnesota. A chapter in our forthcoming Flora book will be devoted to images from the collection (the above is not included) and a profile of Dr. Irvin Kerlan, patron saint of tot-lit. We’ve previously posted several drafts and sketches discovered in the Kerlan vaults.

One of a quartet of 5-1/2″ x 6-3/4″ temperas on artist board, each identical except for color scheme, presumably entitled Mardi Gras, based on figure studies by that name. The undated studies (sketches and refined tapestry) and the other three variants, which reflect Flora’s early 1950s style, were reproduced in The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora. The spots on the above image indicate moisture discoloration, sometimes euphemistically referred to as an “aging artifact.”