Flora Edwards: A Woman of Many Worlds

I have a brother from another mother (Virgil Alderson), and his mother, my mother from another brother, is Flora “Layla” Edwards. Flora has two sons, Virgil Alderson and Lee Edwards.

Flora passed the 25th of April, 20026, and left this earthly plane. She has long been a celestial person, so she is surely at home in any dimension she chooses to be in now. I was blessed to spend time with Flora at her Rancho “El AR” in San Cristobal de Las Casas, in Chiapas Mexico.

I first visited the ranch many years ago on trip I took there from Oaxaca with my Brother Virgil.  Ranch El AR has a long history I won’t go into here, but Flora has her soul imprinted all over the ranch, in green houses, a goddess temple, and flowers everywhere amidst thousands of trees and corn.

Flora was a world class artist who deserved far more recognition than she received, but like many artists, she was better at making art than promoting herself. I was fortunate to spend a good amount of time with her, document her art, and help her get a show in town, at the Galeria Enzue. I contributed to getting many of her beautiful pieces framed, and took photos of many of her paintings that you see below. Whenever I visited her home at Rancho El Ar, I made sure she had plenty of art supplies, and helped to furnish her kitchen after her return to Ranch El Ar after many years in the U.S.

It was always a gift to sit in Flora’s kitchen.

To have tea and snacks with her, to listen to her stories, to be welcomed into that space — it felt like stepping into a world that moved by a different rhythm. Or to sit in her studio and hear her talk about what piece she was working on, or what a particular work of art meant to her. Flora always had a soft voice, and just as importantly, she knew how to listen. She was one of those rare people whose presence made space around you.

Flora was an artist, a mother, and a seer.

She was worldly, and yet somehow otherworldly. Some of the stories she would tell would leave you wondering: How could that be true? How could she have been in the room with a famous musician like that? Or with a master Sufi? Or another great artist? I won’t drop names. That was never the point. The point was that Flora had lived — fully, deeply, mysteriously — and she carried those experiences not as trophies, but as atmosphere. She had moved through many worlds, and when she spoke, you could feel that.

Sometimes being with Flora felt like being with an interpreter from another realm.

My own mother Cella passed away in 1994, and there was something about being with Flora that touched that wound in a healing way. My papa was a rolling stone, as they say, but one thing he did get right, was choosing the mothers of all my brothers and sisters (myself, Wolfram, Elizabeth, Lawrence, Samantha, Virgil, and Harry – six of us, one father, and four mothers, Cella, Adele, Flora, and Jane). Flora lovingly filled a space in me that had been left painfully open. Not by replacing my mother — no one could do that — but by offering something of that same feminine depth: warmth, intuition, gentleness, and a kind of wise, unforced presence. They were both artists too. For that, I will always be grateful.

Flora’s art was like looking through a lens into other realities.

Below on this page, you’ll see some images of her paintings. They may seem out of focus to some viewers, but I don’t think they are out of focus at all. I think they show exactly what it looks like when you peer through a lens into another world, another universe. Flora painted from a place beyond the ordinary. Her work feels less like representation and more like transmission. To spend time in her studio was to feel that you were in the presence of someone who saw more than most of us do — and who tried, with grace and mystery, to bring some of that vision back for the rest of us.

If you visit her Facebook page, one of the things you’ll notice is the abundance of flowers she took pictures of.

So many flowers.

She loved them. It feels fitting, of course, that Flora would be surrounded by flora. Beauty recognized beauty. Life recognized life. There was something deeply botanical about her spirit — rooted, organic, unfolding, full of form and color and quiet surprise.

Flora kept her door open.

Her kitchen door.
Her studio door.
The door to her heart.

That openness was part of her gift. She welcomed people into her spaces, into her stories, into her art, into the shimmering edge between this world and another.

And then there was the extraordinary goddess temple at Rancho El Ar.

One of the unforgettable features of her ranch in San Cristóbal de las Casas was this remarkable structure — a sacred, handmade, magical place that seemed to carry the imprint of ritual and devotion. I’m told that many ceremonies were held there over the years. By the time I arrived, a giant tree had fallen and crashed down onto it, leaving the roof collapsed. But even in its broken state, the magic remained. You could feel it the moment you stepped through the door — a door that was unmistakably a goddess door. Inside were the tiles, the hand-shaped figures on the walls, the traces of something lovingly imagined and lovingly built. It was one of the many touches Flora gave to her life: beauty made tangible, spirit given form, mystery made inhabitable.

That temple felt like Flora herself.

Wounded perhaps, weathered perhaps, but still radiant with intention. Still charged with meaning. Still unmistakably hers.

I am forever grateful to have known her, to have spent time with her, to have sat in her kitchen, to have listened to her stories, to have walked through her studio, to have seen her worlds, and to have her art hanging on my wall.

I love you, Flora, wherever you are.

Thank you for your gifts.
Thank you for your amazing art.
Thank you for your kindness.
Thank you for filling, in your own beautiful way, some of the great gap my own mother left when she departed this earth.

And I send much love to my brother Virgil, to his brother Lee, to all of Flora’s grandchildren, and to all of her loved ones.

I love you all.

Flora remains — in her art, in her flowers, in her stories, in the rooms she opened, and in the worlds she helped us see.

Flora “Layla” Edwards

Virgil and Flora