Florence's Art

‘Imagery for me is always very important. I used to do a lot of installations at art college. And it would involve lots of fake flowers and hanging up bunting and lots of lampshades and stuff and just creating like a bower. And when I was doing a stage, I’d buy lots of fake flowers and put them all over the drums But I think you know, flowers to me remind me of funerals and kind of something more a bit about them as well.’

Florence, before starting her music career, was a student at Camberwell Art College where she got in due to a flower arrangement that spelled out ‘You’re a twat’. She finished a foundation year and got into Illustration course. However, the college period lasted for only a year since school bored her – she preferred to slumber in her handmade hat or simply write new songs.

In the interview for The List, December 2009, she said: ‘I made a lot of environments. Bat for Lashes [a former University of Brighton art student] said she makes microcosms – tiny worlds in a shoe box or something – but I was turning a whole room into something else, with bird cages and things, kind of like what I do on stage now … Maybe in music you’re making an auditory environment and maybe you change your environment around you to suit your own way.’

Here’s one of Florence’s installations, which she made while studying at Camberwell College of Arts.

Florence’s ‘IT IS SO FUCKING COLD’ fake flower piece from art college.

Flo often used handmade decorations made from fake flowers to decorate the stage during Lungs tour. (in the background you can see Florence flower-text, at the gig in Salford (01/06/09)).

She also baked a cake with the words, “It’s going to get worse” iced on the top before eating it as part of a performance.
In 2010 Florence and Isa took part in a charity event during the Rock Werchter festival in Belgium. Their task was to paint and decorate the statues, which were auctioned on-line. The money was given to the charity, which was building a new home for disabled people.

In 2010 ten of the music industry’s hottest talents have contributed exclusive work to Selfridges‘ new window scheme – ‘Sounds of The Mind’. As part of its ‘Music in May’ season Selfridges invited 10 music artists to design a window each based on one of their own songs. With a view that so much emphasis in a song is put on the soundtrack, Selfridges wanted to offer artists the opportunity to bring their lyrics to life with a 3D visual. Florence’s design is based around her track ‘Cosmic Love’. She said of the project: “Secretly I always thought if I wasn’t a singer I would like to be a window dresser. I used to do a lot of art installations at art college so this really appealed to me.
“I was really excited about the idea of seeing the lyrics to my songs portrayed in such an original and exciting way. It’s about creating a representation of the song in a visual sense so what a song would look like instead of hearing it.”

In one interview for triplej, she created this artwork and named it ‘To sink ship of state’.

In 2016, Florence took part in ‘Art In A Corner‘ project, inspired by ‘Images of a Woman’ (1966) by The Beatles. The artwork is also the same size and was made using materials chosen to match those used by The Beatles in 1966. The painting contains direct, textual references to the music of Florence + the Machine. The lines “Like the stars chase the sun across the glowing hill I will conquer” are lyrics from the song ‘Queen of Peace’, which appears on the band’s third studio album, ‘How Big, How Blue How Beautiful’, released in June 2015. The words “make me a big tall tree” are lyrics from ‘Mother’, a song on the same album. Painted in its entirety by a true global sensation, the artwork represents a highly collectable visual companion to the music of a singer at the forefront of contemporary popular music (Paddle8). It is available to buy at the auction with the starting bid of 2000 GBP. The money will be given to Children & the Arts and Youth Music charity.

And here’s some Florence’s drawings that we found on the internet as well as those, that Flo drew for us backstage at Coke Live Music Festival 2013.