Ted CoConis: An Illustrator You Should Know

In one of our correspondences, David Blossom's son Peter wrote, "Back when we were growing up all the area artists knew each other and seemed, to us kids, to have a real social connection and (at least in our case) used each other as models. Ted CoConis (do you know his work? If you don't, you'd surely recognize it) was a close neighbor and my father used him in a number of illustrations and I used to model for Ted a lot as a child."


When I began compiling material for this week's series of posts I couldn't help but wonder if Peter Blossom had modeled for this gorgeous Reader's Digest Condensed Book series by Ted Coconis. Last night I wrote to Peter and asked him.


Peter very kindly got back to me right away: "That's not me in Ted CoConis's illustration," he wrote. "However, that's Ted on the upper right hand picture of the three "Dogs of War" in your post about my father."


I then went to the Internet hoping to locate some info on Ted CoConis and - wow! - Mr. CoConis has a website!


There's no need for me to provide a biography - you can read it at Ted CoConis' site (f you can tear yourself away from lingering over the many beautiful images in the gallery section, that is).


I will add this note, however, from Walt Reed's "Illustrator in America": Ted CoConis "has won numerous awards from the Society of Illustrators, The Art Directors Clubs of New York and Los Angeles, and other associations. His work is in the collections of The Society of Illustrators Museum of American Illustration, The Bishop Museum, and the Boca Raton Museum of Art, as well as several other corporate and private collections."

* My Ted CoConis Flickr set.