Budding Art Collector

I found the very ’60s, very pink painting below hanging in the bathroom of a Cottonwood, Arizona antique mall. It had a price tag of ninety-five dollars. I hemmed and hawed, but the artwork was so charming — and so obviously professional — that I decided to snatch it up (at a discount, no less).

This zaftig Lady Godiva immediately looked to be some kind of illustration art, perhaps for a greeting card company or Playboy type magazine. The name signed on the painting, Strejan, wasn’t a familiar sounding one to me, however. A little research uncovered an artist named John Strejan, who died in 2003. Strejan made his name as a preeminent pop-up book craftsman in the ’80s and ’90s. This painting looks to date from much earlier, but all I can find on him relates to his pop-up book career (perhaps the painting was by a different Strejan?). According to his New York Times obit, he had earlier worked as an art director for Teen magazine and Bullocks department store. I’m going to attempt contacting Mr. Strejan’s loved ones to see if they can shed some light on this enigmatic gal.