The Amorous Unicorn

Butterflies and briar roses, swans, honey and milk ... this is the poetry of thighs, fresh and uncomplicated, unashamedly erotic, and having nothing whatsoever to do with bees or cows except by association. Tulips and robins and cherries ... Flory's hatpin pricks of sensibility thrust deep into the balloon of Toronto civility.

Florence Vale was born in Ilford, England on 18 April, 1909, and emigrated to Canada, to Toronto, with her family, fifteen months later. Her formal schooling ended with grade seven, when she went to work full-time at a job she hated in Toronto's garment district, for the sum of eight dollars a week. When she was eighteen, she met Dutch-born artist, Albert Jacques Franck, when he was a swimming instructor at the Oakwood pool. Two years later they were married. Their life together is described in Harold Town's Albert Franck: Keeper of the Lanes, published after Franck's death in 1973. Florence Vale's career as a professional artist had begun in 1948. A major retrospective of her work was organized in 1980 by Natalie Luckyj for the Agnes Etherington Art Centre at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, and toured galleries throughout central and eastern Canada, including the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Dalhousie Gallery in Halifax. Her work is in major public and private collections throughout Canada, the United States and Great Britain. Vale's tiny 1965 pen and ink drawing Pyramid of Roses inspired Harold Town's series of Vale Variations as well as Pyramid of Roses, Christopher Chapman and Gordon McLennan's 70mm and Dolby stereo short film production, with music by Harry Freedman, celebrating both Town's Variations and the original Vale drawing. The first volume of her work, Florence Vale: Selected Drawings and Verse, was published in 1979 by Aya Press, Toronto. The Amorous Unicorn was published in 1984 by The Porcupine's Quill, Erin, Ontario. Vale died in 2003.