Filed Under: "maritime"

fishing in New Orleans

June 3, 2010

Detail from a series of woodcuts Flora produced as a freelancer for the Union Central Life Insurance Company of Cincinnati around 1940. They were reproduced in UCL’s monthly Agency Bulletin to illustrate articles about the history and legacy of the Crescent City. The images proved so popular they were issued as a limited edition folio by the company in 1942. Flora later admitted that at the time he produced the woodcuts, he had never visited…

Continue Reading... fishing in New Orleans

Today we launch a new Jim Flora fine art print: Ferris Wheel Fireworks, adapted from Flora’s second kiddie book, The Day the Cow Sneezed (1957). The long-sought book will be reprinted this fall by Enchanted Lion. At that time we’ll issue a print of the book cover, which includes the artist’s fabulous hand-typography. However, during the image restoration process, Flora archivist/printmaker Barbara Economon saw the print possibilities of the book’s chaotic two-page (34-35) tableau. The…

Continue Reading... Ferris Wheel Fireworks (new print)

moptops on deck

March 21, 2010

Untitled pen & ink and tempera (or watercolor) on paper from the late 1980s/early 1990s, featuring a colorful zoom-in on an ocean liner with three faceless moptops on deck. This work dates from the close of Flora’s maritime period (1980s), probably around the time, as he told an interviewer in the 1990s, that he’d “painted himself out of ships.” His large maritime canvases of the 1980s were historically based, spectacularly detailed and less primitive. In…

Continue Reading... moptops on deck

ship and helmsman

February 27, 2010

Untitled, undated, unfinished ship and helmsman sketches; tempera and pencil in sketchbook. These drafts, which probably date from the early to mid-1950s, are juxtaposed on the page as shown.

Continue Reading... ship and helmsman

seaside setting

October 15, 2009

Detail (about two-thirds of the complete work) of an untitled, unpublished tempera on board, ca. mid-1960s. The collection contains a number of similarly composed maritime paintings from this period, though colors and figures vary. If you have our recent book, The Sweetly Diabolic Art of Jim Flora, compare this setting with Salt Pond—Block Island on page 54.

Continue Reading... seaside setting

Lobster Pound (1962)

October 6, 2009

Taking a break from conjuring bonus-limbed mutants and bug-eyed boppers, Flora often sketched maritime culture in his extended backyard. The above untitled pen & ink of a seafood shack was discovered in a travel sketchbook that contained dozens of the artist’s impressions of Italy and France, several dated 1962. Back on his “home surf,” Flora filled another two dozen pages of the tablet with southern Connecticut shoreline vignettes and briny motifs.

Continue Reading... Lobster Pound (1962)

cordial claws

September 16, 2009

Anthropomorphic lobsters from sketchbook, pencil and crayon, early 1960s. Intended project unknown.

Continue Reading... cordial claws

peek skills

June 16, 2009

This cutaway view of a cruise ship affords a glimpse into cabin and deck activities—some naughty, some nice. The undated, unpublished pen & ink on tablet paper probably dates from Flora’s “late ship period” around 1988-90, when he was transitioning away from maritime motifs and back to music, architecture, portraits, and landscapes. His large acrylic ship canvases rendered during the 1980s were more lifelike than the cartoonish styles for which he’d been renowned as a…

Continue Reading... peek skills

ship in silhouette

May 27, 2009

This ship is part of a large untitled tempera harbor montage painted by Flora on a slab of masonite around 1951. How “large”? How much of a “part”? After isolating the above detail, I copied and pasted it horizontally and vertically over the full original to figure out how many elements this size could fit in the complete image field. Outcome: the above detail represents 1/52nd of the entire work.

Continue Reading... ship in silhouette

Champlin’s Dock

January 31, 2009

Middle of three tiers from sketchbook tempera, ca. 1963-65

Continue Reading... Champlin’s Dock

Hampton Roads (pt 2)

December 2, 2008

Undetermined media (framed, under glass): print with touch-up, or black tempera, ca. 1968, detail. Previous detail posted on August 20.

Continue Reading... Hampton Roads (pt 2)

canoe critters

October 17, 2008

This untitled tempera from the mid-1960s is currently in production as a silk-screen print by Aesthetic Apparatus, based in Minneapolis. It will be released with a companion print—different theme, but identical color palette. Both works, previously uncirculated, were discovered in a sketchbook in the Flora archives. We’ll post the other print shortly. Aesthetic Apparatus produced our Mambo For Cats and Pete Jolly Duo LP cover screen prints, as well as our Primer for Prophets series.

Continue Reading... canoe critters
  • Jim Flora
  • The Mischievous and Diabolic art of James Flora (1914-1998). Glimpses of rare works from the archives and news about Flora-related projects.

  • Categories

  • Archives