FLORENCE & GERTRUDE
BOOKS
Published and forthcoming titles from Florence & Gertrude Editions.
The Vertical Line : Observation and Abstraction in Contemporary Painting
Harry MC www.harrymc.co.uk
Published: January 2026
Format: Paperback, A5 · 106 pages
ISBN 978-1-9195016-0-4
Description
The Vertical Line is a sustained investigation into stripe painting as a method rather than a style. Drawing on five decades of observation and studio practice, stripe painting artist Harry MC examines how vertical division can carry light, colour, and rhythm without recourse to image or narrative. Grounded in long-term observation in Provence and resolved in a Bath studio, the book traces how architectural structure and Mediterranean light can be translated into measured sequences of paint. This is not a history of stripes, nor a manifesto. It is a practical account of how a reduced visual language remains unexhausted — how proportion, temperature, and interval continue to generate new problems when taken seriously over time. Written with clarity and restraint, The Vertical Line offers insight into abstraction as lived practice: slow, cumulative, and accountable to looking.
Publisher: Florence & Gertrude Editions
THE VERTICAL LINE
Observation and Abstraction in Contemporary Painting
Stripe Painting : Observation and Realism in Abstract Art
Harry MC www.harrymc.co.uk
Published January 2026
Format : Paperback, A5 - 184 pages
ISBN 978-1-9195016-1-1
Description
Stripe Painting: Observation and Realism in Abstract Art is a research-led book by British abstract artist Harry MC, whose practice centres on contemporary stripe painting. In the book he argues that stripe painting can operate as a form of realism without depiction. Moving between visual perception, architectural structure, and studio method, it examines how vertical bands can encode proportion, interval, and colour temperature drawn from sustained observation. The book situates stripes within wider global traditions of pattern and within contemporary digital conditions, while remaining grounded in practice: how an abstract language can retain fidelity to lived experience when resemblance is removed.
​
ARTING AROUND SOUTH OF FRANCE
Florence & Gertrude ( text & photography)
Published: 2024
Format: 20cm x 26cm - 252 pages
Description
Arting Around South of France is a visually led travel book built from repeated trips through Provence and the surrounding region, written and photographed by Florence & Gertrude. Moving between art spaces, historical sites, and the everyday life of towns, it maps a practical, personal route for travellers who like to look — and to return.
The book brings together museum and foundation visits, Van Gogh locations, Roman architecture, bookshops and street scenes, with a light touch and an eye for detail. Locations include Arles, Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, Glanum, Les Baux-de-Provence, Nîmes, Avignon, Uzès, Pont du Gard, Anduze, Montpellier, Oppède, Roussillon, Ménerbes, Lacoste, Aix-en-Provence and Château La Coste.
Publisher: Florence & Gertrude Editions
FERMÉ LE LUNDI
Art Spaces in the South of France
Florence & Gertrude (text & photography)
Publishing: 2026 (month tbc)
Format: A4 · 192 pages
Description
Fermé le lundi — “closed on Mondays” — began as a familiar frustration: you arrive at a much-anticipated art museum or foundation and find the doors shut. Rather than fight it, this book leans into the rhythm. It’s a visually led guide to contemporary art spaces across the south of France, built from first-hand visits, repeat trips, and the kind of planning that always includes a back-up.
Made for anyone who loves the feel of contemporary art spaces — the calm, the light, the scale, the particular hush of a good room — it brings together photographs with concise notes on museums, foundations and artist sites worth the detour. Practical enough to travel with, but paced like an art book, it’s designed for returning to as much as arriving.
Selected locations include LUMA Arles, Fondation Maeght, Fondation Carmignac, La Friche la Belle de Mai, Collection Lambert Avignon, Carré d’Art Nîmes, Fondation Vincent van Gogh Arles, Lee Ufan Arles, La Ribaute (Kiefer) and Fondation Vasarely. Tuesdays are strongly recommended.
Publisher: Florence & Gertrude Editions
FERMÉ LE LUNDI
Art Spaces in the South of France
Measured Intervals Marseille - Stripe Paintings and their Design Studies
Harry MC www.harrymc.co.uk
Published 2026
Format : · 216mm x 279mm · 96 pages
Description :
Measured Intervals Marseille is a book by British stripe painting artist Harry MC, developed from fieldwork and photography in Marseille. It continues the architectural stripe investigation in a distilled register, less about accumulation, more about proportion, pause, and how a canvas holds light. The volume brings together stripe paintings with their location-based photographic reference and studies testing stripe width and height, interval, and colour adjacency as a way of translating Marseille without depiction. MUCEM acts as a key reference point: repetition held steady, made variable by sea-light and changing conditions.
​
THE ART OF HUMOROUS GREETINGS CARDS
Florence & Gertrude (Text & photography)
Published 2023
Format : 210mm x 210mm 100 pages
Description :
A book of artistic greetings card designs featuring the surreal humour of an English creative team. Their shared passion for art and photography combines with a love of the south of France, bizarre juxtapositions, absurd situations, and expressions of absolute nonsense. Designs feature Florence & Gertrude en francaise with Florence and Gertrude engaging with the locals in their ‘less than perfect’ French. Away with the fairies, a series featuring Irreverent humour combined with wacky, surreal, and downright daft situations of everyday life. And Dennis in outer space with a retired geography teacher from New Malden becoming Britain’s first man in space.
​
​
