The Art of Emerging

Moths seem to have played an increasing part in imagery during the years I've been running a light trap. Butterflies still predominate in fashion designs and the like, by a good margin, but their humbler cousins are getting a fairer share.

Take for example the work of Sarah Smith, a student at Glasgow School of Art, where Penny and I have just joined happy celebrations of our lovely niece Rosie's graduation with a first class degree  - check out this reference to her in Creative Review as a 'visual powerhouse'. What more could anyone want to be (other than a moth).

Anyway, I was most pleased that her colleague Sarah acknowledged moths as well as butterflies in her display, which featured mini-dancers emerging from their cocoons. Just to reinforce the appropriateness of her imagery, here are some beautifully designed moths from last week's bumper haul, which I am still sorting.

But first, and also appropriate to the incongruity of some of Sarah's half-human, half-insect man- and womenekins, here is a curious combination from the eggboxes - half moth, half snail. Both appeared to have survived their night together and I carefully separated them and hid them in different refuges from our busy and inquisitive garden birds.

Now for a lovely moth; I am fairly sure that he or she is a Sallow Kitten. Distinguishing these from the equally beautiful and very similar Poplar Kitten is beyond my powers but the Sallow is more common and therefore the likelier bet.

Here, below, is a pretty Brimstone moth, probably a second brood encouraged by the current magnificent midsummer weather, and then two studies in black and white or chiaroscuro as artists call it: a lovely Marbles Coronet and a Clouded Border.

And finally for now, a subtly understated mixture of cappucinos on a moth I will ID later and a Dot Moth, which even I can get right and whose name needs no explanation.