Filed Under: "monsters"

The Rover Boys, tempera on board, ca. 1943. The work was presented as a wedding gift to Clara Gee Kastner and Stanley Stamaty, Flora’s classmates and friends from the Art Academy of Cincinnati. (Clara and Stan are the parents of cartoonist Mark Alan Stamaty.) No idea if the triple-headed figure was intended to portray the Rover lads of literary fame. The work was reproduced in The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora A pen and…

Rasputin-strength, dismembered and trepanated zombie. Spot illo (woodcut, one of many), Murderpie, Little Man Press, 1939. Publication written by Robert Lowry. Whereabouts of original woodcuts unknown.

Detail, Grandpa’s Ghost Stories (Atheneum Books, 1978). Yes, this little mise en scène is from a lighthearted book for young readers. Fun for the whole family! Bone apetit!

Our latest Jim Flora fine art print is White Block Quadrupeds (an informal name for the above untitled work). WBQ is an uncirculated, early 1940s Flora painting which depicts an inscrutable panorama of disconnected facial features, headless quadrupeds, and a fanged horse. The original was painted in tempera on a thick rectangular block of wood the artist had first swathed in a coat of white. The stylized figures echo motifs found in the artist’s work…

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.”

Duos, a collection of works by Charles Wuorinen composed for two musicians, is now available from Albany Records. The untitled Flora cover art, licensed for this release (by Howard Stokar), is from an early- to mid-1960s sketchbook.

Pen & ink drawing, mid-1990s. This work was later adapted for a large colorful acrylic canvas. Both undated works reflect Flora’s mid-1990s techniques and media. The painting was recently photographed and is being considered for reproduction in our next anthology.

business card, Davis Delaney Printing (ca. 1950s) adapted pencil and tempera figures from sketchbook

Detail, The First Five Years, acrylic on wood, ca. early 1970s. The second of six horizontal tiers depicting incidents during the artist’s childhood. Exactly what these figures represent—good question.

Two new Jim Flora silk screen prints are available at JimFlora.com. Both are based on untitled, undated temperas from the mid-1960s, which were discovered pages apart in a sketchpad. We informally call this one Entangled Couple: And this one has been nicknamed Canoe Critters: Each was produced in a numbered edition of 100 by Aesthetic Apparatus, in Minneapolis, and though the prints are color-matched, they can be purchased separately. (If you want both and use…

Untitled pen sketch, ca. early-1940s. This image was later adapted (along with more than a dozen seemingly unrelated sketch works) in a 1943 copper-engraved montage entitled Air of Panic. The white vertical skunk stripe is an artifact likely caused by long-term exposure to light; the white area was shielded from exposure while the rest of the paper became yellowed with age.

Pen & ink on sketch tablet paper, 1995. If you’re wondering where Conakry is located, it’s on the coast of Wikistan.