Dedicated to Flora, the ancient Roman goddess of flowers, Sheryl Humphrey’s “The Sisterhood of Flora” is an ongoing series of small-scale oil paintings, depicting girls’ and women’s faces surrounded by blossoms. With mysteriously compelling gazes directed at the viewer, the subjects of these portraits from imagination take on an otherworldly aspect, even as they merge with the flowers around them.
Like sibyls or oracles, Humphrey’s “sisters of the flower” seem far-seeing or possessed of some arcane knowledge. The women in these invented portraits can be seen as the flowers’ guardians, or as the spirits of the rose, the morning glory, the lily, and even the lowly dandelion.
"In the works of Sheryl Humphrey one sees both a history and individuality. The Surrealists have had their influence, as has Frida Kahlo, the Nabis and others. Humphrey reaches deep into the symbolic and the magical, to achieve a very personal expression of the forces of the universe and of self. These are stylized renderings, but in the eyes of her subjects one has access to the soul." -- Susan Hartenstein, "From the Artist's Studio" column, The Rockaway Wave, January 19, 2007.