10/05/2026
Our Featured Artist this month is the “most nominated “featured artist to date, so she is very special indeed. She’s an incredible artist with a wealth of experience, plus she is a wonderful person and member of the South Delta Artists Guild.
Featured Artists - Irina Florov, Bulgarian-born and educated (BA in English Literature, State University of Sofia, Bulgaria), is a Canadian artist who has created and exhibited art in Vancouver galleries and various exhibition spaces, and more recently, in the 1710 Gallery in Tsawwassen. Her drawings, etchings and paintings have been featured on the covers (and between the covers) of more than ten books and magazines, published in Canada, the UK, Germany, the Czech Republic and Bulgaria. In the last few years, she has begun experimenting with collage and mixed media, producing unique mixed-media compositions inspired by her love of art, poetry and ancient history. Learning from the masters of the Twentieth Century Surrealist Movement, she challenges the perceptions of reality and time and creates imaginative and whimsical compositions.
In her early twenties, she hit the jackpot when she fell in love with a man with a creative mind and an impish sense of humour, Nicholas.
Irina had been drawing since she was a child and, luckily, when she was hired by UBC in January 1988, and found out that she was entitled to free 6 credit-courses per year, she immediately enrolled in an evening life drawing class. By the end of the two terms of life drawing, the teacher, Kybor Dancer, a well-known at the time sculptor and artist, strongly encouraged her to begin exhibiting. There followed the first shows and sales. Nicholas, looking through the pile of drawings on her table, decided that these drawings could be turned into beautiful sculptures, so he went out and bought a couple of large stones, sat down in the backyard of their East Vancouver home and began chiseling. He had never taken any courses or had any previous experience in stone sculpture, but he began producing some lovely sculptures. And so, they became an art tandem.
Later, Nicholas developed his own style of sculpture, wood carvings and assemblages.
He passed away three years ago. Most of Irina’s collages which she created since then are dedicated to him.
This final collage piece is called “Black Coffee. Irina and Nick’s Art Gallery”. It features some of his works and some of hers. Top left is one of his assemblages for which they had bought from the Thrift Store some damaged instruments and he assembled parts of guitars and a ukulele in this composition. In the centre of the picture is a palette with one of his surrealist creations, and down right is a very reduced figure of his “Black Coffee” wood relief. The rest of the images are Irina’s including an excerpt from her “Recycled Words” Series “Truth tries strange things in Life’s darker side, and Love’s wings hear stillness.”
Irina can be reached at [email protected] or or Florovart.com.
