La Fleur, Floral Oil Paintings as Portrait

La Fleur treats flowers as portraits rather than still life. Every bloom in this series is given the weight, symmetry, and frontal attention normally reserved for a face. The flowers do not sit in vases waiting to be observed. They look back.

The exhibition opened on 21 and 22 May 2015 and gathered more than thirty canvases, all painted in oil. The works were developed across two years in the artist's studio, flowers of every size and colour accumulating gradually until there were enough to fill a room. The artist paired the exhibition with a line from Rumi: the beauty you see in me is a reflection of you.

The formal approach borrows heavily from ornament without becoming decorative. Petals radiate in perfect rotational symmetry, closer to a rose window or a zellige medallion than to botanical study. Stems curl into spirals and loops that abandon any pretence of realism. Colour is saturated and unmixed, laid down in flat confident areas: cadmium yellow against deep burgundy, turquoise against orange.

The series connects directly to the artist's years working in henna. Paste drawing is built on radial symmetry, repeated motif, and a line that cannot be corrected once laid. La Fleur takes that discipline and translates it into a permanent medium at a much larger scale. It is the clearest bridge in the collection between the two halves of the practice.

These are also the most immediately accessible works Yous Sufi has made. Where Quadruplicity asks for distance and The Girl asks for patience, La Fleur gives itself away at first glance and then keeps revealing structure the longer it is lived with.

Every painting is an original oil on canvas, one of a kind, signed on the front, and shipped with a signed Certificate of Authenticity.

Works above 5,000 dollars are available by enquiry, with a personal reply within 48 hours. All works ship worldwide from Toronto, crated and insured.