Forgotten Light

The Experimental Light Station

Horatio Morpurgo | London Magazine | 22nd August 2023

On the career of Arthur Moss, brilliant lepidopterist and somewhat less brilliant vicar of the largest Anglican parish in the world — the Amazon basin. "He saw silk-moths with astonishing clarity and painted them superbly. This was a fine achievement. Was it perhaps their beauty that blinded him? He chose not to see anything which might threaten his agreeable way of life" (2,660 words)

Artists Have Forgotten How To Draw

Alexander Poots | UnHerd | 18th August 2023

Art schools have moved away from the kind of education that Michelangelo's students would have recognised: copying others' work until you "charm the cheating eye into submission and learn to really see". Access to human life models must be earned. Van Gogh compared it to giving birth: "First pain, then joy afterwards". It is still worth doing. Drawing like this is compulsive (1,760 words)