Flora

“Flora” would be a good first guess on Wordle.

Five years ago I went to an exhibition of work by students at the City and Guilds of London Art School in Kennington. There was eye-catching work by Flora Yukhnovich that I thought evoked Botticelli. This is how artnet describes her style. “There is something captivating about Yukhnovich’s candy-colored Rococo references, which feel both historically grounded and modern. To make her large-scale works, the artist culls from sources ranging from Old Masters like Tiepolo to such contemporary iconography as Kim Kardashian’s famous wet look from the Met Gala in 2019.”

I didn’t like her pictures enough to buy one; they were too large for Number 56, and I thought £2,000 a bit much for work by an art student. Two friends bought one each. There is one near-certainty if you buy a picture; it will be impossible to sell for more than half you paid. There are exceptions and Flora’s paintings are one. One of the pictures bought that evening has been sold at auction in London for £1.9 million. The other remains on its owners’ wall – at least for the time being. Her work is bang on trend, as they say.