Kelly Freas (2)

Happy New Year! here’s the first post of 2011 on Sci-Fi-O-Rama.

Here’s a selection of psychedelic edged female portraiture from the late American artist Frank Kelly Freas (Aug 1922 – Jan 2005).

Frank Kelly Freas (also just Kelly Freas) enjoyed a career over 50 years working at the pinnacle of Sci-Fi and Fantasy Art. Work included providing countless covers for the magazines and books, such as Astounding Science Fiction/Analog, Mad, DAW, Signet, Ballantine Books . It’s also worth noting that early in his artistic career Freas painted pin-up girls onto the nose cones of bombers for the US Military, and it’s an echo of that inspiration I’ve chosen to focus on, here are the notes on the selected images:

Top: ‘Our Children’s Children’ Cover art for an edition of the 1974 Clifford D. Simak SF Novel. The plot concerns refugees from 500 years in the future arrive through time tunnels, and hard behind them come ravening monsters. I like the sound of that I have to say!

2nd top: ‘The Lion Game’ This 1973 DAW Paperback book covers serves a great demonstration of Freas’s super confident brush stroke work..

3rd top: ‘Rhapsody in Black” This sultry beauty I featured in a book jacket context back in August. I’ve since discovered this larger version of the original painting, I have to say one of my favourite pieces posted in 2010 hence it appears again.

What I also find most interesting here are some of the shared character traits with the other Illustrations: luscious lips, graceful swooping eyelashes and perfectly formed ‘Ski Jump’ noses.

4th top: ‘Mayenne’ another gorgeous DAW cover with those trademark eyelashes, this one from 1973.

5th top: ‘Mirror Image’ This Daw Cover dates from 1972. The plot of this book sounds good, a neat spin on the American cold war paranoia of the time. The story focuses on alien impostors and secret invaders; in this case, the ‘Amorphs’, who indistinguishable from us, are themselves convinced that they are human. Read more on Michael G. Coney at Wiki

Bottom: ‘On the Symb-Socket Circuit’- This flame haired impish enchanter takes the focus of another classic DAW cover. again dating from 1972. Love this one, close in tone to the work of Leo & Diane Dillon.

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For Further Reading: Check out this Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Kelly_Freas

More Images: a Flickr Search http://bit.ly/gTuygR