Florida O’Keeffe | A Mona Lisa Company

Florida O’Keeffe (b. 1989, Treasure Island, FL) is a painter of lush, tropical surrealism. Raised between mangroves and strip malls, she grew up in the glares of neon motel signs and angry flamingos.

Where her cousin Georgia found the divine in desert bones, channeling the sensual grandeur of organic form, Florida finds it in the alligator skulls, tiled pools and spiritual chaos of the subtropics surrounding the recurring subject of Da Vinci’s most famous portrait.

She claims to have never left the state, never flown in an airplane, and once communed with the ghost of Mona Lisa in a Publix parking lot. Her paintings have been shown in bait shops, botanical gardens, and an abandoned outlet mall.

Through big flowers and bigger questions, she asks Is it homage? Is it heresy? Is that a bougainvillea or a warning?