On the front cover of this issue of your magazine is a portrait of a remarkable artist. Garry Fabian Miller is a pioneer of cameraless Fine Art photography. Over decades he has created his beautiful, otherworldly images in the darkroom. It’s a place, he says, of ‘natural magic’, where he has exposed photographic paper to light through natural objects, glass vessels, liquids or paper forms.

 

Our Editor-at-Large, Sue Herdman, travelled to Dartmoor to meet the artist there in his studio. As Sue highlights in her interview, Fabian Miller’s radiant art explores three key elements: light, colour and time. In that, I am reminded of another feature in this issue, on the work of Impressionist painter Claude Monet and, specifically, his depictions of winter.

 

Arts Society Lecturer Caroline Levisse has a particular interest in colour theory, which informs her talks. In ‘Shadows on Snow’ (page 30) she analyses the colours used by Monet in his snow scenes, most famously in The Magpie, which features hues of blue, mauve, pink and yellow, while simultaneously conjuring the biting cold of pure white snow. As Caroline notes of Monet’s approach: ‘The white coat of snow provided the perfect surface on which to observe effects of light.’ Referring to Monet’s famous Haystacks series, she adds: ‘Painting the same object at different times of the day and year allowed him to make visible what is otherwise intangible and elusive: light, but also the passing of time.’

 

Light, colour and time – three huge themes explored by two outstanding artists, working in different eras and using distinct mediums and techniques. The good news is that you can see works by both very soon, with the exhibitions Garry Fabian Miller: Between the Moon and the Hawthorn at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, and Monet: Painting Time opening in February 2027 at Tate Modern. Perhaps I’ll see you there.