About Florence

Florence Cichocki was born in Baltimore Maryland and recently moved to Northampton, MA to be near family.

Early in her life Florence dreamed of becoming an artist.  As a child, Florence remembers long hours at her father’s side watching him carve and draw.  Her desires for art continued to grow until she sought formal training.  She graduated from commercial art school and entered the professional field.  After some years in that field she returned to her former school as an instructor.

While her commercial art experience was fulfilling, Florence nurtured a strong desire to pursue a career in fine art.  Watercolor became her medium of choice.  What followed was an intense preoccupation with and self study of this medium.  She spent a number of years studying and mastering an extremely realist painting style.  The technique is accomplished through repeated transparent washes to build up the depth of color without applying excess pigment to the paper, thus keeping a translucent quality that is so appealing to the eye.

Her accomplishments in watercolor have been many, including acceptance in the American Watercolor Society (AWS) annual shows and traveling exhibits.

Perhaps her most fulfilling moment came when C. Fraser Smith, art critic for the Baltimore Sunpapers, said in describing one of her works selected for top prize in watercolor “This work appeared, even to the unprofessional eye, a tour de force of the medium.  The detail and precision would have seemed extraordinary even for pen and ink.”