Artist Anna Stead, a.k.a. Thistlemoon, was born in London, raised in Worcestershire, and moved to the Cotswolds in 2016. She and her husband, two children, and two cats live there now in a little house on the very edge of a small town surrounded by fields and woods.

The charming landscape of her adopted home, with its “quiet wildness,” is a huge inspiration for her drawing, she says. In every field there’s deep-rooted history and folklore that can be explored and appreciated; she loves “seeking out the mysterious little corners in our landscape,” and these sweet details, ranging from abbey ruins to a spray of inkcap mushrooms, inhabit her art. She’s long been captivated by all things rooted in mystery, magic, and the past: those castle ruins, the secret paths into forests, stories about elves and wizards. A love for fantasy, myth, and history, as well as a deep connection with nature, inform and incite almost everything she creates. “At the moment I’m very inspired by ancient landmarks,” she says, “and have embarked on a project of drawing detailed maps!”

She’s known among friends and family for her love of trinkets and oddities, as well as collecting little pieces from her travels such as stones, moss, dried plants, and feathers. She has a particular fondness for owls, moons, and mushrooms, not to mention the exceedingly Tolkien-esque Tyn Llan Welsh pottery. As a result, you’ll find all manner of witchy little objects in any corner of her home.

No matter how far-flung her imaginings, she manages to stay grounded. Her workspace is in her “cozy little kitchen with doors out to our garden,” which she tries to keep open to let in lots of nature’s fresh air and soothing sounds. Her other essentials for a day of fantastical drawing are a “sweet cup of coffee, burning candles, and a cuddle from my most snuggly cat, Merlin.” Which sounds like the best way to work, in our opinion.

See more of Stead’s work at thistlemoon.co.uk or visit her on Instagram @thistlemoon.

It is in the thinnest layers that precious things are hidden,” Italian artist Laura Winter says. “The casing of a flower that lets its interior shine through, the filigree of a dry leaf, the wings of a moth.” We’ve long admired her delicate watercolors, oil paintings, and painted porcelain, with their scenes of blooming flowers and cascading leaves, of sweet birds and bats and cats and foxes, of gleaming, dropping fruit. It’s all so lovely. Winter likes to combine botanical and animal elements in harmonious compositions, she says: “A sinuous curve, a light shade of color that turns into its complementary color, the two blending together to form unique nuances in a tonal balance. This balance cheers the soul, rests and delights the eyes.” That’s what her art is—restful. As restful and soothing as it is beautiful.

Winter has a weakness for detail and intricate things. She uses different techniques that she believes shines through in each one of them. In ink illustration, she likes to create subtle textures through “hatching”: The lines blend like spiderwebs until they form a certain shape, she explains. “Through them you can discover different shapes. It’s like a microworld that creates itself, helped by the touch of the pen.” In oil painting, she’s most fascinated by color and the layering of colors—the magical “glazes” from Flemish painting that form unique atmospheres and from whose overlapping you can achieve unique shades sometimes impossible to create otherwise. For her, painting on porcelain is a mix of all this: “You can decide to have sharper lines, but you can also use colors with a more liquid consistency, creating veils of color that make the shapes as a whole more delicate and ethereal.”

She’s constantly inspired by a search for beauty, and “every object or natural element represents a world to discover and from which to draw a lot of inspiration.” You just have to know how to look, she says, and how to “observe deeply through and in things.”

See more of Laura Winter’s work on Instagram @laurawinterart.

Picture them under glass: four small pieces of bark vered from left to right with the delicate white fungi udoniella acicularis, which is found on rotting logs; the feather moss Eurhynchium straitum, common throughout the wood; the cup-shaped blue fungus Chlorospenium aeruginascens; and in clusters of orange discs, the Anthracobia macrocystis—all gorgeous scientific specimens, carefully collected as if straight from the forest floor. Except these are made from … silk and thread? Thousands of miles of thread to be exact, and no small amount of enchantment.

Fiber artist Amanda Cobbett had been working for more than a decade designing textiles when she found herself wanting to sculpt and make three-dimensional art—both of which she’d done in school—once more. She also wanted to find a way to preserve the objects she foraged during the long walks she’d take with her dogs and children through the forest near her home in Surrey, England. A family friend had given her an old Bernina sewing machine, and she started experimenting. When her children’s school needed cakes for a fundraiser, she thought maybe she’d embroider replicas of her forest finds instead, just to see. They sold out. When she made more for the Chelsea Flower Show, they sold out too.

As she continued to experiment, dissolvable fabric was a huge revelation. She put it into an embroiderer’s hoop and used her machine to build up layers of thread. She discovered that when she washed away the carrier fabric, the embroidered thread that remained created a new textile she could use in her sculptural pieces. Using other materials as well, she developed new techniques for replicating what she saw in nature: She made papier-mâché stems for the fungi and covered them with fine silk, then embellished them with sewing, markers, and burning techniques.

Currently, she’s exploring and then replicating in thread the fungi and lichens on the various estates belonging to a duke in Scotland. She has a long waiting list of future commissions. And she won’t be bored anytime soon. “Different threads behave differently when put together, so the possibilities are endless,” she says. There’s always a new discovery on the horizon—or underfoot: “We’re naturally inclined to look at the bigger picture, but then we risk missing the tiny details that can be found all around us.”

See more of Amanda Cobbett’s work at amandacobbett.com or on Instagram @amandacobbett.

Katrina Haffner’s love of mushrooms began as a child, when she and her family went hiking in the Oregon woods and umbled on some Amanita muscaria. The surprise of their ruddy, otherworldly beauty captured her imagination, and she was nvinced, she says, that fairies were afoot.

Decades later, she still gets a thrill every time she finds amanita in the wild. This is how she stays enchanted—by tapping into the wonder of her first childhood encounter with natural magic. Spending time in wild nature comforts and sustains her artistic spirit; it makes her “feel nurtured by something honest and pure.”

Mushrooms are one of her favorite subjects to paint, she says, partly because they’re so diverse in color and structure, so physically stunning—and even more because they’re mysterious. That’s probably why her pictures are both eerie and charming at once.

The more she learns about mushrooms and the remarkable symbiosis of which they’re capable, she says, the more she realizes that each organism on earth is connected to others in ways we can’t see. So it seems as natural as it is brilliant that in the two gouache paintings shown here, the mushrooms seem to be growing out of the animals. That type of connection is a hallmark of Haffner’s art. When we asked what the fusion means to her, she responded that some people tell her that her images “bring up thoughts of death or suffering,” but she has a different take: “I think it’s healthy to contemplate your mortality and the cycle of life in a way that makes you feel connected instead of disconnected. For me, it’s expressing an emotion, a feeling of being entwined with everything.”

Her work is, more than anything, a celebration. As she puts it, it’s “a reminder of our origin, fragility, and connection to the wild animal spirit.”

See more of Katrina’s work on Instagram @katrina_haffner.

We didn’t think that this issue would be complete without these stunningly surreal oil paintings by Nebraska artist Kristin Kwan—that gleaming unicorn, those sprays of delicate shrooms, and that gorgeous girl weeping pearly tears under an ntoinette-worthy coiffure of curly oyster mushrooms. We’re more than a little obsessed. (Who could cry amid so much beauty? Therein lies a story …)

Kwan told us that she’s always been inspired by the natural world and that growing up, what she most loved to do—even more than drawing—was ride her bike out of town and spend a whole day wandering through the woods.

When we asked why mushrooms (though of course mushrooms!), she said, “First off, they’re just so visually appealing. They grow in such an infinite variety of shapes and textures that just beg to be painted.” Their way of life is fascinating to her as well: “Being neither plant nor animal, the symbiotic relationships some have with plants, the way they appear like magic—they’re always so exciting to find on a walk, so familiar and foreign at the same time.”

She told us about the two fungally inflected pieces we’re featuring here: Multitudes (above) was created for a group show with a mushroom theme. In her contribution, she wanted “to echo the dappled coat of the unicorn in the pattern of mushrooms.” In Oyster (right), the pattern of the gills was interesting to explore and challenging to create. “They’re not the most scientifically accurate oyster mushrooms,” she said, “but ultimately, the girl really is the oyster in this painting, making pearls.”

Each piece, she told us, “becomes almost an excuse to sit and explore an object or scene in a deep way.” When she observes her subject up close like this, she starts to see in a way that she rarely gets to do in day-to-day life: The thing itself almost disappears, and a whole new dimension of colors and textures opens itself to exploration. “The painting becomes a pretext to enter this world and stay there, struggling with the materials but getting the gift of seeing beauty in every small detail.” In this way, she says, she brings “the joy of seeing, the stillness in just looking,” to her art.

Learn more about Kristin Kwan’s work at kristinkwan.com or visit her on Instagram @kristinkwanart.

On these pages we feature all manner of iconic, dramatic, thunderous art—from gossamer-gowned goddesses to avenging Biblical heroines, high-minded (yet questionable) angels to the occasional rakish courtier, and more. But we’d also like to take a moment to celebrate all those charming and extremely lovable animals who sometimes hover in the periphery or

skulk along the (wine-soaked) ground, with their side-eyes and can’t-evens and sometimes straight-up judgmental disdain. Indeed, in many of the paintings that depict meme-worthy “ugly Renaissance babies,” one can find domestic cats and dogs appearing to have had more than enough of our nonsense—not to mention barnyard friends who are equally done with human interaction and just want to eat their flowers in peace.

The astonishing feline above, of whom we are not at all worthy, was memorialized by contemporary Dutch photographer Marie Cécile Thijs, whose work is inspired by the old masters. For her series White Collar, she photographed a delicate 17th century ruff from the collection of the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam and, with digital techniques, put it on her models to create images like the modern-day Renaissance icon you see here, who would not be caught dead skulking on the floor of a Medici feast but would certainly enjoy a seat at the table. Just picture this queen sashaying through the door with Dürer’s lion (right) … You know they’d be utterly savage when you walked in, dressed like the human peasant you are. Are you fit to crimp that ruff? Probably not. But there’s a goat over by the minstrels’ gallery who wouldn’t mind getting his fur brushed.

Find Thijs’s work at mariececilethijs.com or follow her on Instagram @mariececilethijs.

A quick scroll through Tuesday Riddell’s Instagram feed will yield brief yet dizzying captions like these: “birds decorating branches with foxglove flowers,” “raindrop-laced web,” “cluster of ladybirds hibernating in the curl of an autumn leaf,” “a bracelet of brambles,” “squirrels’ tails curling around an arcing branch,” “under a sunflower bridge,” “poppy seed showers,” “butterflies hatching in the moonlight while worms munch on kiwis,” “butterfly stealing a pearl.” And so on. Her subject matter is the teeming, swirling, ever-flowing life of the forest floor at nighttime, all the flora and fauna down to the seeds and insects and stems of the plants. Her artwork makes us privy to a hidden, fecund world—one that flares to life in the dark.

I’d been a fan of Riddell’s art for some time before one day I glimpsed a video of it. I was astonished to see how the flat piece I’d loved in photos glowed and shimmered when held to the light. I’d been so enamored of her renderings that I hadn’t realized how complex and delicate her medium is: japanning, an endangered 17th century technique developed by European artists to imitate lacquerwork from Asia.

To create each piece, Riddell sands and polishes a wooden board, then prepares it with up to thirty layers of lacquer that she mixes herself with pigments and varnishes before letting it harden into a black, mirrored base surface. Once the lacquered board is ready, she marks out silhouettes, works on the backgrounds using luster powders, and fills in the silhouettes with layers of shade and line and gold- and silver-leaf, and occasional mother-of-pearl. It’s a time-consuming, painstaking process; each artwork ends up consisting of around forty layers.

I now have a new life goal: to view one of Riddell’s pieces in person to see its complexity, the interaction between its elements, just a she can see the intricacies of the darkest nighttime wood, where each look brings something unexpected, even miraculous.

See more of Tuesday’s work on Instagram @tuesdayriddell

Sharp leaves unfurl from either side of a ram’s skull, where horns curve up and out.

Small insects and hummingbirds alight on stems and flowers. Veins curl like coral from behind rib cages. A bird’s talons grip an arrow that ends in feather wisps. A spider waits in its perfect web, gold spinnerets jutting from its abdomen.

It’s almost impossible to believe that these are sculptures, handmade from something as ordinary as paper, using an X-Acto knife and glue to achieve incredibly fine detail.

According to multidisciplinary fine artist Marisa Aragón Ware, creating these intricate, three-dimensional sculptures is a painstaking process that can be laborious and often feels like trying to solve a puzzle. “Not everyone can relate to oil paints or marble,” she says, “but everyone has handled a piece of paper. What I find most profound about the art form is that an artist can take something so commonplace and everyday as paper and turn it into something extraordinary.”

Ware currently teaches in Colorado, where she was born and raised and where she garnered a deep appreciation for nature from a childhood spent roaming through forests and meadows with nature-loving parents. Her scientist father helped develop her talent for observation by encouraging her to crouch down and study subtle differences at eye level. She went from recording the individual veining on a single flower’s petals to helping injured wildlife with her mother, who loved every little bird and raccoon.

“I learned,” Ware says now, “how to pay attention and appreciate the ordinary beauty all around us.”

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See more of Ware’s work at marisaware.com.

British artist Ann Carrington was welding in her studio a couple of years ago when she noticed, over a two-day period, a spider steadily weaving its web nearby. It was, she says, “a thing of beauty and a privilege to watch.”

She did a bit of research and learned, among other things, that spiders’ silk is five times stronger than a steel wire of similar diameter. “If human sized, a spiderweb would be tough enough to snag a jumbo jet!” she marvels. She began imagining a spiderweb made from steel, snagging perhaps not jumbo jets but supersize bugs and neighboring spiders! Eventually she put the piece she was working on aside and started making a web instead.

She has by now produced more dazzling webs than a cluster of spiders—and they can be huge, measuring five feet or more across. Hers are made primarily of a welded-steel base onto which she’s woven additional webs fashioned from old necklaces, beads, and bracelets; she attaches handmade or found brass bugs from old ashtrays, trinket dishes, ornaments, butterfly brooches, and vintage necklaces. She thinks of the bugs and insects she attaches as lucky charms or amulets. The beads on the webs are suggestive of dew.

Though her body of work is vast and varied and wonderful, she keeps returning to her favorite motif. The effect of all the brass and found objects and painstaking work is, in the end, quite delicate, even transcendent, just like that first inspiring gossamer web.

“I find beauty in mundane objects that other people might pass by,” Carrington says. “There is magic all around. You just have to stop and pay attention.”

See more of her work at anncarrington.co.uk and visit her on Instagram @anncarringtonart.

Jamie Spinello creates jewelry, sculpture, ceramics, and small paintings inspired mostly by plants and insects. It makes sense then that remaining connected to nature is her favorite way to stay enchanted: She stays grounded and curious by keeping a garden and seeing it change throughout the seasons. Living in Austin, Texas, she says, “we rarely get a true fall where the colors drastically change on the trees en masse, but we often get what feels like a second spring in the fall months, which allows us to have two full growing seasons each year.” Watching insects and plants in her garden brings her joy, so she’s partial to the seasons when she can witness them living their best lives. She also loves witnessing things that died in the summer months come back with vigor in September, October, and November. “My garden often looks better in the fall than it did in the spring,” she says. “The butterflies, moths, spiders, and beetles usually increase again, and the lizards become more prevalent. Fall in Austin feels like a celebration of life after the end of the brutal 100-plus degree temperatures of the Texas summer.”

She looks to the sky too, using the full and new moons as well as other astral events to assess her progress with her work, aspirations, and state of mind, as well as how successfully she’s been able to balance her life. This moon-gazing practice helps her determine when it’s time to recharge or go forth with more expansive energy. This sounds pretty witchy to us. “I admire those seeking to learn new ways of enchantment in order to connect to spirit and to better themselves, their environments, and the lives of others,” she says when asked about witches generally. “We need all the healers and conjurors on deck in this world.”

See more at jamiespinello.com and follow her on Instagram @jamiespinello.