Love Letters...

Love letters to Florence are a series of original paintings on antique envelopes dated around 1919. The antique envelopes are addressed in elegant script to Florence Mc Mahon of Buzzards Bay in Massachusetts. The letters are from different people and sometimes include little notes written on the envelope, presumably to Florence’s maid. I bought the envelopes in New York and was captivated by the imagined details surrounding Florence, Flo, or Flossie as she was called. I am now imagining the contents of her letters in the form of artwork, over a century later. Each piece tells a story through the colour, design and vintage fragments and together they are a collection of memories, a life imagined. This is a story of deep love and passion, expressed as a colour, person, possession or a place....from one to another.. truly heartfelt sentiments. Painted very much from the heart, the idea for each piece is revealed as I touch the paper and pick up a brush, they feel almost like channeling history.. i hope you enjoy them.

Love Letter No. 7: Cocktail 1 ‘Bees Knees’

During Prohibition, clandestine cocktails were still being created ‘stateside’ and the drinks invented ‘across the pond’ meant that the ‘flapper’ decade was celebrating- glass in hand! People covered up the flavours of ‘bathtub gin’ with fresh lemon and honey in an effort to make it more palatable and the ‘Bees Knees’ cocktail was made with gin, honey, lemon, and a dash of champagne.

This piece came about on a Friday. I imagined Florence dressed up at the end of a week, enjoying a cocktail with a slice of lemon. She would be sat on a chaise longue in a room with exotic peacock feather wallpaper and golden table tops. Perhaps the gramophone is playing gently in the background as she looks out across the garden where the juniper berries grow.

Collaged text includes definitions of gin, lemons and bees and the background is embellished with gold powder and fragments of a music score.