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James Allen Flood is one of Miami's undiscovered
talented treasures.
This 55-year-old bachelor artist-sculptor-musician
paints ships, putting the likeness of a battleship or an ocean liner
on a canvas with oil paint, the finished product almost resembling a
photograph and matching the real vessel so closely that it is
virtually impossible to find a flaw. The sea in his paintings is
seemingly real enough to taste the salt, his attention to detail so
precise that you can count the rivets in the steel hull of a
battleship.
Jim Flood portrait of an artist with his ships on canvas
"I guess you would call it hyper realism,"
he explained. "I always feel that an artist can do more than a
photographer. In fact, you've got to be an artist to be a
photographer. I can completely control the canvas and put in the kind
of sky and the kind of conditions that I want and put things together
that a photographer can never do. So, there will always be artists.
Photography is just a tool."
Flood -- who resides in a small, older house on the
North bank of the Miami River, a residence that is as much a studio as
it is a home, with paintings of ships hanging or leaning on the walls
and ship models cluttering tables claims a love for ships since he
was a small boy.
"One of my earliest memories is when I was five
years old and my uncle took me down to the Philadelphia port," he
said. "That's when I got hooked. I can still see'em today, all
those bridge fronts with the water, all those hulls; it just filled me
with awe. I guess I just liked the shape of ships and it has become my
specialty, I'm a maritime historical artist."
Flood spent his childhood in Pennsylvania, re-locating
to Miami in the early sixties and finishing high school at Miami
Jackson in 1963. In that era of the Vietnam War, Flood received his
draft notice and decided he just couldn't serve his country as an Army
man.
"I went down and pleaded with them to put me in
the Navy," he recalls. "I couldn't see going in the Army
because I was always a water animal. I've always loved ships and
always mucked about in boats. They obliged me and I went in the
Navy."
After a four-year hitch serving on a cruiser, a
destroyer and a battleship Flood was discharged and he returned to
Miami, where he entered Miami-Dade Community College as an art major.
"That was a mistake," he recalled,
"because they didn't like the way I painted. It was a very humbling
experience, I must say. I painted very realistically, always have. My roots
are in the 18th and 19th centuries and I've never understood this thing
called modern art.
"Most of my classmates and teachers were all hippies and stopping the
Vietnam War was their main thrust, while I'm trying to be a serious artist
and get my degree in art," he continued. "There were only a couple
of teachers that liked my work. The ones that didn't like me said what I
painted was trite and that I was possessed by my own technical facility.
Even the kids -- they hadn't been to Vietnam -- would ape the teachers and
say, 'Oh yes, you know, it's nice, but it's too realistic.' Even my family
was critical of my work."
Disillusioned, Flood packed away his brushes and paints, determined to give
up on a career in art and find a job. He worked on a tugboat on the Miami
River for awhile then as a sailing instructor for Castle Harbour Sailboat
Rentals in Coconut Grove. But, little by little he returned to his first
love of painting the ships that sailed the world. In 1974, he landed a job
in the mail room with Eastern Airlines, which allowed him the freedom he
needed to perfect his artistic talents, while still collecting a regular
paycheck. In 1986 he transferred to Eastern's art department and became a
staff artist.
When Eastern finally declared bankruptcy 1991, Flood decided it was time to
spread his artistic wings and make his living independently with his paints
and brushes. He struggled for awhile, drew logos and commercial aviation
art, and then life gradually began to improve for him.
"One of the first good things to happen was meeting the people at the
United States Naval Institute in Annapolis and getting a few pointers,"
Flood recalled. "And then Sea Classics magazine saw my art and invited
me to contribute to an issue. From that, I started getting more work from
other magazines and it just snowballed."
Today, sailors who served on ships in World War II are writing Flood and
asking him to paint a portrait of their ship."I've done a number of
paintings of American warships and had lithographs done, too," he said,
"and I sell the lithos as well."
Flood also is in demand to do illustrations for maritime magazines and he
accepts commissions from individuals and organizations and companies that
want paintings done of their yachts and ships. He is negotiating to do a
painting of the USS Texas for the organization that runs the memorial in
Houston and already has done work for the associations for the USS Boston,
the USS Pennsylvania and the USS Oklahoma. He is currently working on a
$7,000 commissioned painting for New Jersey Governor Christie Todd Whitman.
"She commissioned me to paint the battleship USS New Jersey, which was
my ship," said Flood. "The state has just acquired her and plans
to make her into a memorial and museum."
Flood says he's happy that recognition and fame are finally coming his way.
"Just because you're a good artist doesn't necessarily mean that you're
going to be successful," he said. "You need God's help. But, I'm
very, very grateful that I'm doing something that I love to do and that I'm
making a living at it."
For more information about Jim Flood and his oil painting of the world's
maritime fleet, please call 305-634-9707.
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