Today Mahlerman looks at composers who also painted, or painters who also composed... The overlap and admixture of musical composition and painting was not something I had even considered until, quite recently, I heard a piece of music (thank you Radio 3) by the Lithuanian composer and painter Mikalojus Ciurlionis - ... Read More...

  We've teamed up with Artfinder - the online affordable art marketplace - to showcase artists who we think deserve to be seen by a wider audience. Our latest choice is Ramesh Jhawar, a watercolourist from India... Self-taught Indian artist Ramesh Jhawar has won several awards for his watercolours, including the Outstanding Watercolour ... Read More...

Nige appraises Swedish artist Carl Larsson, who along with his wife Karin virtually invented the 'Ikea' style... Born on this day in 1853 was the Swedish painter Carl Larsson. Perhaps it should come as no surprise that this supreme master of the blissful, love-infused domestic interior (and exterior) and celebrator of ... Read More...

We've teamed up with Artfinder - the online affordable art marketplace - to showcase artists who we think deserve to be seen by a wider audience. Our latest choice is Rorie Nairn, a painter who specialises in landscape and the effects of light and weather... Artist Rorie Nairn travels throughout the UK ... Read More...

For sheer painterly pleasure, Nige says you can't do better than visit the John Singer Sargent exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, running until 25 May... To the National Portrait Gallery for the John Singer Sargent exhibition, Portraits of Artists and Friends, which is, unsurprisingly, brilliant. Such dash, such effortless technical mastery, ... Read More...

Today's poetry and painting piece features Edward Thomas, Paul Nash, W.H. Davies and birds' nests... In addition to their intrinsic beauty, the bare trees of late winter and early spring offer an opportunity for the discovery of birds' nests.  This thought brings to mind Edward Thomas, who was a great searcher ... Read More...

Nige is blown away by Norwegian painter Peder Balke's masterly seascapes, in an exhibition currently showing at London's National Gallery... I admit I'd never heard of Peder Balke before reading about this exhibition. Balke was a Norwegian painter (1804-87) whose mature style was so heavily criticised in his day that he ... Read More...

The Royal Academy's exhibition of paintings by Giovanni Battista Moroni is the first large-scale survey of his works to be staged outside Italy. Nige reports... I only knew Moroni from the handful of his intriguing portraits in the National Gallery - including the famous Portrait of a Tailor (top) - and I was eager ... Read More...

Vandals come in all shapes and sizes, and their targets and their reasons can be hard to fathom... Last year, when reading about Art Under Attack - a Tate Britain exhibition of pieces that have been deliberately damaged over the years by iconoclasts of one kind and another - I was startled ... Read More...

In today's Dabbler Verse feature, Stephen considers self-awareness, and introduces a poem by C. Day Lewis... Is it possible to look at yourself objectively?  To see yourself for who you are?  Speaking for myself, I have my doubts.  Still, I like to think that I am more optimistic about the possibility ... Read More...