Flower Diary: A Talk with Molly Peacock

Best-selling biographer and poet, Molly Peacock, reads from her newest book, Flower Diary: In Which Mary Hiester Reid Paints, Travels, Marries & Opens a Door, introducing us to the luscious paintings of an American Canadian artist you’ve never heard of – till now.

In her new book, Flower Diary, Peacock weaves together elements of biography, memoir and art history to reveal the world of Mary Hiester Reid, a fascinating, complex woman who insisted on her right to live as a married artist, not as a tragic heroine. A foremother of Georgia O’Keefe, who lived in a subtle menage with her painter husband and a talented younger painter at both the Onteora Artists’ Colony in the Catskills and in Toronto, Heister Reid produced over 300 passionate paintings in which the figures of flowers and trees become like a diary of her life. How did she manage a private, domestic life while also painting? Hiester Reid had her answers, as Peacock gloriously discovers. “Peacock is unfailingly sensitive and intelligent, and at times deeply moving, as she shows how, despite the shade of domestic life and the unfavourable climate of the times, MHR brought forth her bright blossoms,” writes Ross King.