“i found it so fascinating ”

40 years ago, I was first introduced to the art of small scale painting by a friend who painted miniature portraits. With her encouragement and seeing the variety of work at The Royal Society of Minia

When David Joseph began exploring the world of close-up photography, he was using a mobile phone and cheap clip-on lens. Here he talks to Tracy Calder about how his life has changed thanks to snakes, spiders, frogs and a wonderful act of kindness

After a life-threatening illness spurred Helene Kröller-Müller to make plans for a museum, she bought modern art voraciously, forming an extraordinary collection that shaped the early-20th-century perception of Vincent van Gogh

When COUNTRY LIFE’s Henry Avray Tipping spotted a 17th-century four poster languishing in a Herefordshire attic in 1911, he set off a chain of events that saw the bed leave its ancestral home and land at The Met in New York

I knew at a very young age I was an artist. It was a calling for me. I was also fortunate to have a mentor in my teenage years; he was an accomplished artist and professor of art at a local college. H

LUCIA LEYFIELD IS NOT AN ARTIST prone to grand statements. Her work speaks in subtle tones: sketchbook pages filled with weathered doorways, overheard conversations or fragments of wild gardens. A let