TEMPLE OF FLORA ~ Dorothy Circus Gallery, London March 30 – April 25, 2026 [preview: March 28, 5-7 pm]

Please join us for a preview evening for my show Temple of Flora at the Dorothy Circus Gallery in London on Saturday March 28th, 5-7 pm. The preview is a private event so please contact the gallery to get on the guest list or for other inquiries.

Temple of Flora is a small intimate show featuring paintings celebrating flowers and their symbolism especially in connection to love in its myriad stages. All of the works are accompanied by the poems which inspired them, creating a modern florilegium of words, pictures and flora. Please visit my previous post to view the other works released and to learn more about the show.

From you have I been absent in the spring,
When proud-pied April, dressed in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in everything,
That heavy Saturn laughed and leaped with him.
Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odour and in hue,
Could make me any summer’s story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew:
Nor did I wonder at the lily’s white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were but sweet, but figures of delight
Drawn after you, – you pattern of all those.
    Yet seem’d it winter still, and, you away,
    As with your shadow I with these did play.

~ "Sonnet 98: From you have I been absent in the spring" by William Shakespeare

From You Have I Been Absent in the Spring (Hand with William Shakespeare’s Sonnet 98 and Lover’s Eye)
8 x 6 inches, oil on aluminum panel
©️2026 Fatima Ronquillo

**Venus with Serpent, Seashells and Tulip**
18×14 inches, oil on aluminum panel
©️2026 Fatima Ronquillo

Now sleeps the crimson petal, now the white;
Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk;
Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font.
The firefly wakens; waken thou with me.

~ from "The Princess: Now Sleeps the Crimson Petal" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

No flower hath spoken
     Of hope until now!
How welcome this token,
     The green Myrtle bough!
No gift could be better;
     Unless he would write,
Three words in a letter, –
     ‘Expect me to-night.’

~ from "The Myrtle" by Thomas Haynes Bayly

Suitor with Myrtle and Lover’s Eye
12 x 10 inches, oil on aluminum panel
©️2026 Fatima Ronquillo

**Adonis with Starlings and Cherries**
17×14 inches, oil on aluminum panel
©️2026 Fatima Ronquillo

When he was by, the birds such pleasure took,
That some would sing, some other in their bills
     Would bring him mulberries,
     And ripe-red cherries. 
He fed them with his sight, they him with berries. 
 
 ~ from "Venus and Adonis" by William Shakespeare


Slow, slow, fresh fount, keep time with my salt tears;
Yet slower, yet, O faintly, gentle springs:
List to the heavy part the music bears,
Woe weeps out her division, when she sings.
Droop, herbs and flowers,
Fall grief in showers;
Our beauties are not ours:
O, I could still,
Like melting snow upon some craggy hill,
Drop, drop, drop, drop,
Since nature’s pride is, now, a withered daffodil.