Projektityyny Travelling Tales, episode 3, Flora Roberts

A tapestry of creative souls carving out corners of their homes for ruffles, for patchwork, for bows and all.

Join us as we travel to visit some of our amazing customers, observing our Nordic textiles living out life in the hands and homes of artists, designers, writers and big dreamers from near and far.

Nestled in a secluded and breathtakingly beautiful valley in west Dorset lies a humble barn belonging to Flora Roberts

On an exceptionally hot and sunny May morning, we had the immense pleasure to visit Flora in her atelier where we talked about her work as a painter, how it all started, and life’s wonders in general. We also had the privilege to see her recent work and witness her adding new layers to her latest painting…

I have always been interested in painting and always flowers…

I mean, my name is Flora, so there’s a bit of a nominal determination there. I studied at Glasgow School of Art, textile design. So I did printed textiles and embroidered textiles, and then I went on to the Royal College of Art to continue with that. And then after I graduated, I got really into mural painting in people’s houses. I basically restored a mural in my sister’s house, and I got really into the idea of painting walls.

With my textiles background I wanted to explore creating some wallpapers…

I now work exclusively with a company called Hamilton Weston, and I do all my designs with them. It’s really exciting to have all my designs in one place. Alongside that, my work is informed by the painting I do from life. So I paint a lot of flowers from life, and I’m really interested in—sounds very basic—but just colour. A bit like you, Nora, I used to love doing patchwork, because it’s just that arrangement of colour that Im interested in, isn’t it? Like a painting, patchwork can be like an abstract painting. You can put a bit of red there and a bit of green there, sew it all up, and you’ve got a beautiful quilt.

I grew up in Scotland, in the middle of a very remote countryside…

We were in an area where there was lots of rainfall, it was quite a grey landscape. So when flowers came, the colour was just so beautiful and it really spoke to me.

Also, my mum’s a painter—we had quite a lot of artwork in our house growing up, so I was really influenced by that.

My grandfather’s cousin Winifred Nicholson, is an amazing painter— when she paints a flower, she’s really interested by the essence of it, rather than capturing it in a very literal way. And so her work really speaks to me and is a big influence.

The first snowdrops are a sign of hope…

 …and then when you get towards May, suddenly there’s like a boom, isn’t there, in the garden. You’ve got peonies, foxgloves, tulips. Oh my god, the tulip fever. I get really excited, and I get quite overwhelmed. I’m not going to be able to paint the things I’m seeing quick enough, because I paint from life; the petals are moving because it’s a living thing. Even when you cut it and you put it in water, it’s moving around so much, and it’s just so exciting. And I just get so keen to get involved and capture it.

In my own home…

…I’m really keen to make it feel like it’s a modern house that we’re living in now, but also bring in and refer back to its history. I’m currently collating things we’ve had in our life before we moved there, and then bringing in the occasional new thing. Your quilts have been so useful for us when thinking about colours. Because textiles are a bit like paint charts, aren’t they? You can sort of look at them and you can think, well, that pink’s not going to work in there. But I don’t have to go through the faff of getting the pink paint out on the wall. It’s just an easy reference, isn’t it? And it helps you set the mood and feel at home. You just put a throw on the sofa, and it just sort of automatically, sort of, softens the edges.

Painting is just like designing a quilt…

This is a painting I’m in the middle of at the moment, where I’m painting right now from life. Like, say if I’m going to add something here, I’ll think, oh no, it needs something over there. So then I have to do something over there. And then I’m like, if I’ve done something over there and it looks right, then I’ll leave it. But it’s just balancing. It’s exactly like designing a quilt. You just know when it’s right, and when it’s finished, don’t you?

Watch the episode 3 of our Travelling Tales with Flora Roberts here