Josephine Florens
Josephine Florens grew up in a household where education, culture, and literature were deeply valued, and where art was a natural part of everyday life. Although her parents were not artists by profession, creativity shaped the rhythm of her home. Her mother loved handicrafts and possessed what Florens describes as “golden hands,” knitting, embroidering, and sewing with care and precision. Reading was constant, and their home library was extensive. Theater visits, artist monographs, and discussions around images and mood formed some of Florens’s earliest and most enduring memories. Her father also drew with ease, often creating animals on request, moments that quietly but powerfully shaped her visual sensitivity.
While creativity was present from childhood, the decisive shift in Florens’s artistic life came later, following the death of her mother. At that point, painting moved from being a passion to becoming a necessity, a way to process grief, express emotion, and regain inner balance. Art became a source of support rather than pastime.
Florens studied painting individually at the Art-Ra School of Fine Arts, where she developed strong technical skills, discipline, and an understanding of classical visual structure. This foundation later merged with a more personal and expressive language, allowing her to evolve toward what she describes as “modern vintage,” a synthesis of classical visual culture and contemporary emotional perception.
Her work is characterized by continuous experimentation across genres and styles, guided by the search for the most precise visual language to convey inner states, memory, and meaning. Recurring motifs include children, animals, and nature, which for Florens represent vulnerability, purity of perception, and an unguarded connection to the world. These subjects allow her to explore the human condition quietly, without overt dramatization, through restraint, trust, and emotional clarity.
Florens draws inspiration from artists such as Carl Larsson, Beatrix Potter, Jenny Nyström, Friedrich Hechelmann, Jean-Baptiste Monge, Petrus van Schendel, Émile Munier, and Albert Anker, particularly their sensitivity to light, intimacy, and everyday life. Her love of classic detective literature, especially Arthur Conan Doyle and Agatha Christie, has also influenced her attention to structure, detail, and the subtle logic underlying visual narratives.
Her creative process depends on calm and focus. She often works while listening to audiobooks and drinking tea with honey, maintaining a steady rhythm as she paints. Preparation is deliberate: reflection, internal analysis, sketching, and careful setup of materials precede the act of painting itself. When inspiration wanes, movement and environmental change restore balance. Walks, travel, botanical gardens, zoos, and exhibitions provide renewed curiosity and grounding.
Florens’s surroundings play a significant role in her imagery. The painting Happy Elf, for example, is rooted in memories of a greenhouse she once maintained in Odesa, filled with exotic plants collected through travel. Forced displacement due to the war in Ukraine required her family to leave that home, but the emotional presence of that space continues to live within her work.
At the heart of Florens’s practice are themes of kindness, compassion, ecological awareness, and resilience. She hopes her paintings invite viewers to pause, reflect, and reconnect with fundamental values, to remember a sense of inner innocence and attentiveness often lost amid upheaval. Remaining faithful to her artistic path through loss, displacement, and uncertainty has been one of the most fulfilling aspects of her journey.
Florens measures success by the capacity of her work to prompt reflection and a return to core human values. Looking ahead, she plans to develop a large, multi-year painting series dedicated to the United States, pursue solo exhibitions, and eventually open a gallery as a space for dialogue and exchange. She is also actively engaged in the broader art community as a member of the College Art Association Annual Conference Committee, contributing to international professional and academic dialogue. Across all aspects of her practice, Florens remains committed to depth, compassion, and the belief that art begins with the ability to care for another,
