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Tricia K. Florence
painting on glass
Tricia Florence currently has a studio in the woods outside of Sandpoint, Idaho where she lives with her husband Ed and her cat Issa. Bears, moose, deer, and snowshoe rabbits are frequent visitors to the home site in the cedars. She studied art at Boise State University with John Takehara; at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California; at Central Washington University with Ken Cory, at North Idaho College with Allie Vogt, and she received her BFA from Eastern Washington University. She has shown her work throughout the United States, received grants from the Idaho Commission on the Arts (for which she is extremely grateful), and has had her work published in the Women’s Artist Datebook. Currently her work consists on painting and collage on glass. She is working on a series inspired by an Italian poem, Orlando Furioso.

Artist’s Statement

My life revolves around literature and art. I paint during the day and read by the woodstove at night, usually with our kitty, Issa on my lap. One evening I came across a passage in a book of essays by Andre Aciman about a literary character. “It is a character named Astolpho from “Orlando Furioso”, the sixteenth –century epic poem by Ariosto. This Astolpho landed on the moon-- in the poem a giant lost- and–found, bric a brac landscape containing everything that was ever lost or ever wished for but never granted. Mankind’s unrealized artifacts litter the lunar surface, and you must thread your way cautiously through the rubble, for vials containing stolen goods and unhatched schemes crackle underfoot, and wasted years and abandoned hopes are strewn about everywhere.” I put the book down. I thought to myself, “WOW, like my art!!!” I had been making collages and building up surfaces with the detritus from my life for years. A chord was struck, a journey was begun. I have spent the last few years on the moon. In this work I weave together images from Ariosto’s poem with segments from my life much in the same way Ariosto spun his verse from the threads of his life and history. contact

Lover's Sighs

Prayer's Unnumbered

River of Tears

Submitted on Sunday, May 21, 2006