Jerrold Timothy Flores (Born 1940) American, Large Modernist Signed Oil on Masonite Painting. Signed lower left "Donti", the artist's customary pseudonym. 

Overall Size: 49 x 49 in.

Sight Size: 47 x 47 in.

Jerrold Timothy Flores (Born 1940) is active/lives in CA, New Mexico, California / USA.  Jerrold Flores is known for Precisionism, Light Art, Minimalism, Ceramics, drawing, painting.

Jerrold Flores was born in Fort Stanton, New Mexico, in 1940. His given name is Jerrold Timothy Flores. Although known as “Jerry” when he was a child, Flores adopted the name “Donti” as he became an artist in his late teens and early twenties. “Donti” was derived from the combination of the names Donald and Timothy, the two men, who according to Flores’ mother built the incubator which saved his life after he was born prematurely.

Jerrold Flores was born in Fort Stanton, New Mexico, in 1940. His given name is Jerrold Timothy Flores. Although known as “Jerry” when he was a child, Flores adopted the name “Donti” as he became an artist in his late teens and early twenties. “Donti” was derived from the combination of the names Donald and Timothy, the two men, who according to Flores’ mother built the incubator which saved his life after he was born prematurely.

Flores grew up in New Mexico and later northern California. From an early age, he drew, sketched and painted. His formal art education occurred at The Academy of Art Advertising (later the Academy of Art College/University) in San Francisco and San Francisco State University. Not being enamored of university life, Flores recalls leaving in the middle of class to start his career as a working artist.

Soon after striking out on his own, Flores opened his own small gallery and studio on Columbus Avenue near Broadway in the North Beach neighborhood of San Francisco. It was there that he became Charles Bell’s (1935-1995) first art instructor. Bell had been working as an accounting supervisor for C&H Sugar in San Francisco, when he decided to take art more seriously. Flores did not normally give lessons, but was struck by Bell’s sincerity and authenticity, so he relented and helped Bell as much as he could.

Bell credited Flores with teaching him to “see” as much as “draw.” Bell said of his experiences with Flores that “once you learn to draw with precision, you never see in the same way again.” Bell’s early paintings owe a great debt to Flores’ work from the carefully drawn compositions to the hand-crafted and fabric-lined frames that Flores taught Bell to make. After these initial sessions with Flores, Bell later went on to become one of the most heralded photo-realist artists of the 1970s and 80s.

In addition to selling from his own gallery, Flores showed his work at the Pomeroy Gallery in San Francisco. William Pomeroy owned the gallery and F. Herbert Hoover served as Pomeroy’s director during this time. Flores’ first one-man show sold out with early support from Pomeroy, Hoover and the Bechtel Corporation, one of the largest employers in San Francisco and the company that was instrumental in the design and construction of the Hoover Dam.

It is no surprise that Flores’ sleek, machined early oils would have appealed to the Bechtel family and its executives. In the early 1960s, Flores also showed at the Artist’s Cooperative on Union St., San Francisco in 1962 (noted in the Oakland Tribune) and at the venerable jeweler and silversmith Shreve & Co., together with the magical realist painter, Al Proom (1933 – 2006). Later, Flores showed at Los Manitos Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1989.

Museum exhibitions included the de Young Museum in San Francisco at the 24th Annual Exhibition of The Society of Western Artists in 1965, where Flores received the first place award for oil paintings of $150.00 presented by the United California Bank for his work Day Dream, a view of Coit Tower through the open window of his studio. The Show’s award jury consisted of Millard Sheets, Donald Teague and Lenard Kester and was curated by Henry J. Seldis, art critic for the Los Angeles Times. Flores’ work was also shown at the the E.B. Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento in 1975, where his painting This is Where I Used to Live won the Kingsley Award for 2nd place in oils section of the show. Later, in 2002, Flores’ work was shown at the Jacksonville College, Jacksonville, Texas.

Flores was never captured by “isms” of his or any past time. As a young man living near San Francisco’s Coit Tower, he painted what surrounded him and inspired him, particularly the peaks, valleys and geometric structures of buildings, ventilators, smoke stacks and other man-made objects on Telegraph Hill. For a period of five or six years during the early to mid-1960s, Flores crafted precisely composed small oils of the neighborhood he came to know so well as he strolled up and down the Eucalyptus lined path between his cottage and Coit Tower.

During this time, he frequented the coffee shops and other local hangouts together with the poet Alec Ginsberg and the writer Richard Brautigan. Although his early works compare favorably to precisionist painters of an earlier generations, such as Charles Sheeler, Charles Demuth, George Ault, Niles Spencer and Edmund Lewandowski, Flores doesn’t feel any particular allegiance to them. Rather, his early inspiration was Shreve co-exhibitor Al Proom.

By the late 1960s and early 1970s, Flores’ work grew larger in scale and more conceptual in nature. He would never return to the petite meticulously painted landscapes of the early 1960s. By the late 1960s, he became a collaborator with Ray and Joan Andersen’s and Elias Romero’s “light art” which often accompanied some of the most noted psychedelic rock performances of the period, including the 1966 Big Brother and the Holding Company show at The Firehouse. As Flores became more interested in light as a medium for art, he became influenced by the work of Robert Irwin. Flores’ work tended toward minimalism and later towards large fields of color in structural paintings.

After completing a commission for the Berkley Arts Center which included wrapping the entire center in canvas, Flores moved to the Los Angeles area during the early 1970s to work at Ralph Scott’s Project One and later for a short-lived nightclub in Hollywood called The Warehouse, where Flores served as the creative director, organizing everything from the creation of large conceptual canvases to lighting design. The Warehouse was spearheaded by Jerry Brandt and financed by Bernie Cornfeld. Unfortunately, nothing is known about the location of the art that Flores and others created for The Warehouse.

In the late 1970s, Flores returned to his native New Mexico, where he opened a restaurant called Chango’s (aka Annie’s Sure Shot) which also provided a venue to show his artwork. As of 2017, Flores continued to work as an artist. In recent years, Flores has been creating larger format multi-media sculptures from wood, ceramic, concrete and paint.