I grew up in a place called Norfolk, which is a very rural part of the UK.

That is Flora Yucnovich.

Her mother was a teacher, her father was in the Navy, from a young age, Flora wanted

to be an artist, but she was also pragmatic.

So rather than studying fine art at university, she studied graphic design.

And then after that, because I really missed painting, I went to the Heavily School of Fine

Art and did a portrait course for two years.

And then I thought I'd be a portrait painter and I did not like it and I wasn't good at

it.

Why did she want to be a portrait painter if she didn't like it and wasn't good at it?

It just seemed like it was a viable job and that it would be a reasonable living and

that I'd be able to paint all the time.

But after her portrait course, she went in for more art training at Sidi and Guilds of

London Art School, one of the oldest art schools in England.

There she studied art history and theory and she steeped herself in aesthetics, essentially

learning which artists were worth emulating.

Frank Aulbach and Luce and Freud were like very important to me.

Our back and Freud were giants of 20th century figurative painting.

They both made intense moody pictures in somber colors and earth tones.

It was like this group of mythical geniuses that you could only aspire to be like they

filled my head with the idea of what an artist was, this sort of torture genius alone in

the studio.

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