Verses in Bloom, oil on linen, 18 x 24 in.

“This exhibition is all about celebrating the spring season, my favorite season,” Floyd says. “Every painting in Primavera honors the sometimes quiet and sometimes exuberant renewal that springtime represents to me. It is a time of year when the Earth wakes up from a long, cold winter, full of hope and excitement.”

Hope in the Meadow, oil on linen, 36 x 24 in.

In her new work, viewers will notice several recurring motifs, including a blue-walled background. “The blue background is from my entryway and living room. Depending on the time of day and the quality of light, the deep blue shifts to a greenish blue or desaturates to a blue-gray,” the artist says. “I love how the changing light affects the surrounding colors in the space, and how my garden flowers seem to sing against the blue walls.”

Threshold, oil on linen, 40 x 30 in.

Another recurring visual motif is the inclusion of books in many of the paintings. Artists’ libraries are often quite comprehensive, with a menagerie of titles on art, but also many books on other subjects. Floyd can relate. “I love books, and I really enjoy reading poetry, art and gardening books, so those topics make up a big part of my leisure time and fill much of my library space,” she says. “Books are also a way I connect with others. A dear friend has an amazing library, and I love visiting her to browse the new additions she’s acquired since my last visit. It’s such a wonderful way to bond, and I feel a real kinship with fellow readers. Books become a means to express and share that connection.”

Peonies and Tea, oil on linen, 24 x 30 in.

One of the recent pieces is Radiant Threshold, which is 40 by 30 inches. “I love working at that scale because it allows me to really zero in on the details of my setups and the flowers themselves. I love painting ‘portraits’ of flowers; I want them to be botanically accurate while remaining visually appealing. Since I grow the flowers I paint, they are more unique than those from a florist or grocery store. Garden peonies can be a bit windblown and ruffled and rose petals might be sun-bleached after several days on the bush,” she says. “For example, the tulips in the painting Radiant Threshold are from the helmar tulip cultivar. I had brought them inside to paint but initially struggled with how to compose them. So, I set them aside in the entryway on a table and left them for a few days. Cut tulips continue to grow, shift and evolve in a vase, which makes them both exciting and challenging to paint. Tulips change so rapidly in the first few hours after cutting. In this case, though, it worked perfectly, after more than two days in the vase, one morning as I walked by, I caught them in the corner of my eye with early morning light streaming in, and I instantly knew I wanted to paint them right there in that location.” —