Filed Under: "trees"

We received a photo of this festive tableau from our good friend (and devoted Floraphile) in Japan, Takashi Okada. The greeting card, a vintage artifact ca. 1944, was purchased by Takashi from the Flora collection a few years ago. Behind the card sits a demo of Takashi’s forthcoming Raymond Scott Songbook, a 2-cd collection of rare Scott archival recordings and new cover versions by a variety of artists. Positioned to the right is a figurine…

The work isn’t titled, and there’s no specific reference to Independence Day, but this unpublished 1990s acrylic on canvas suggests celebratory patriotism and civic pride, so we’ll offer it as tribute to our nation’s founding 236 years ago today. P.S. This non sequitur works too. Illustration from The Fabulous Firework Family, Flora’s first (1955) children’s book.

Baltimore, tempera on heavy stock, early 1960s

Our latest Jim Flora limited edition fine art print launches today. We’ve dubbed the untitled, undated black and white work Rowayton Creature Tableau because of the strange figures populating the streets of this seaside Connecticut village (the artist’s adopted hometown). The previously uncirculated and unpublished pen & ink with watercolor drawing was discovered in the artist’s collection. We’ve analyzed the technique and determined that it reflects the 1970s style of caricature commonly found in Flora’s…

Detail of large-scale illustration for “A Meeting of the Clan at a State Park,” article in New York Times, October 14, 1956. This detail, reproduced (with the full illustration) in our second anthology, The Curiously Sinister Art of Jim Flora, is from a rejected version of the assignment found in the Flora family archives. The published version has similar elements, but repositioned.

JimFlora.com has released a new fine art print. The panoramic Bell Island at Night was adapted from a 1968 tempera in which Flora provided a surreal nocturnal impression of his neighbors and neighborhood. Bell Island is part of Rowayton CT, and the Flora family lived on the island at 7 St. James from the late 1940s to Flora’s death in 1998. The archival-quality fine art print has been released in an edition of 30 at…

We return from a fine art print hiatus with our first new work of 2011: Bell Island at Night, a 1968 tempera in which Flora provides a surreal nocturnal impression of his neighbors. Bell Island is part of Rowayton (which in turn is part of Norwalk, CT), and the Flora family lived on the island at 7 St. James from the late 1940s to Flora’s death in 1998. Our newest fine art print will be…

Christmas greetings Flora-style from Columbia/Okeh Records. Above: cover of the December 1942 new release flyer from Flora’s then-employer. James had not yet risen to the position of art director (he would in 1943); at the time he was just nearing the end of his first year in the art department under the legendary Alex Steinweiss.

Untitled pen & ink, 1994, from sketchpad. Unknown Mexican (presumably) town square.

Untitled, incomplete tempera and pencil drawing, ca. 1950, found in a sketchbook from Flora’s Mexican period (1950-51). The ghostly shadows in the periphery reflect bleedthrough from an image on the reverse side of the page. No finished or refined version of this work has been found.

Our newest Flora fine art print, G3 in Tampico, is available at JimFlora.com. The 1970 tempera (on board), titled by the artist in pencil on the reverse, sits in storage, previously unseen. The work had not previously been published or reproduced anywhere. Tampico is the main city in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas (and the birthplace of legendary Space Age Pop maestro Esquivel); however, the significance of the Flora title (the “G” and “3” elements…

For years we’ve attempted to interest publishers in reprinting Jim Flora’s 17 popular children’s books. At the top of our wish-list were four titles: The Fabulous Firework Family (1955); The Day the Cow Sneezed (1957); Charlie Yup and His Snip-Snap Boys (1959); and Grampa’s Ghost Stories (1978). We consider these the top-tier Flora kiddie books on an artistic level—with The Day the Cow Sneezed the most outlandish of the quartet. We’ve had inquiries, offers, meetings,…