Good morning everyone!

How is it going? I hope you're having a good April. Something lovely that I did recently was go to a butterfly house. It's easy to forget how incredibly lovely it is to just stand there while these incredible insects go about their business around you. So here is a Fem Fri on the women who study and work with insects.

Let's start with Maria Sibylla Merian, who was born in 1647 so a very early reasearcher and illustrator. And she invented field trips for herself:

[A]t the age of fifty two years, Merian decided that it was time to go and see how these tropical insects were living. This was in 1699, and she embarked on a two-year field trip to Surinam – at a time when field trips didn’t exist. It must have taken her a lot of courage. Her determination is admirable. It was in Surinam that she watched insects in their natural habitat, meticulously recorded their morphology, made observations about their nutritional habits, natural predators and behaviour. Thanks to her detailed drawings and annotations, we know these insects today.

https://www.mpg.de/12708225/maria-sibylla-merian

Definitely read this whole interview with Natalie McIntyre about her incredible insect drawing practice. I'm not going to put any of her images here in case anyone reading this is particularly… not good… with bugs, but I think her work is incredible:

The exhibition is tailor-made for my work so I have tried to show a good selection of specimens using the various techniques I employ. I have been working on an insect portrait series which depicts the close-up faces of insects in minute detail. They appear to be posing, almost smiling as we anthropomorphise the images.

https://www.jacksonsart.com/blog/2016/04/27/natalie-mcintyre/

Have a lovely weekend <3

Alex.