Filed Under: "not that Flora"

We never claimed our favorite artist was a religious figure. Their book costs $1,500. Ours will be more “competitively priced.” Left: one of several early 1940s Flora sketches of the Crucifixion, entitled Descent From the Cross, subsequently developed into a refined pencil drawing (published in our second book, The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora). Flora also rendered the work as a pen and ink with tempera during the 1990s. HT: Don Brockway

A number of Floraphiles have alerted us to a new US Postal Service stamp commemorating Latin Jazz (issued September 8, 2008). They assert that: 1) the artist is, to put it kindly, “imitating Flora,” or 2) Flora himself designed the stamp. The stamp was illustrated by Michael Bartalos, a talented artist who would not deny a Flora influence — in fact, he was friends with Jim. Arguably it is Bartalos to whom we owe the…

“My days were peaceful and sheltered, my time generously idled away on pleasantries of no consequence—until Flora entered my life.”