McKenzie Floyd

As a child, McKenzie Floyd often traveled with her mother, Bets Cole, on plein air painting excursions. Raised in the Willamette Valley, OR, she has since lived in California, DC, Idaho, Italy, and Scotland. She has come to know each of these places intimately through her artistic practice. As a multimedia artist, the common thread in her work is the fact that it is primarily inspired by, and often physically incorporates, the ecology and history of the places she has lived or visited. She uses natural imagery to process the human emotional experience. An integral part of her process is exploring the environment that she is depicting, and she often uses natural materials that she has gathered and photos that she’s taken as references for her work. She is curious not only about the end result of the artistic process, but every element that goes into it. She has made, conserved, analyzed, written about, and taught art. She interweaves each of these approaches into her creative process. She revels in the use of tools and instruments, from sewing machine to handmade paintbrush, in representing the world around her.