The quarterly magazine · Issue 03

Visible
Pressure.

A vivid, artwork-led issue about the forces that paint can make visible: wind, heat, sound, water, growth, and tension.

Explore Issue 03 Read the latest field note ↓
Lagoon Issue 03 lying cover-forward on a charcoal-blue surface, with its spine and page block visible
Cover artwork: Augustus Vincent Tack, Rosa Mystica, c. 1923

From a deeper current · Weather & atmosphere

The Weather Instrument

In Northern Lights, Anna Boberg uses paint as a field instrument for an aurora that changes faster than a landscape can settle.

Read the field note Continue through the archive ↓
Vertical bands of blue, green, violet, and white northern light above dark mountains and water
Anna Boberg, Northern Lights. Study from North Norway, undated Source

From the archive

A red and yellow drawing of a large pale face above several small figures and signs on a torn sheet of paper.

Paul Klee, God of War, 1937

The Small God of War

In Paul Klee’s 1937 <em>God of War</em>, an enormous face cannot make a fragile field of figures obey.
Beautiful unease10 min read
Pastel abstraction with interlocking polygons, vertical bands at top, a small orange circle near center, and broad peach and red arcs sweeping to lower right on a vertical sheet.

Otto Freundlich, Composition, 1924

The Curve That Keeps Geometry From Hardening

In Composition from 1924, Otto Freundlich uses pastel arcs and interlocking color to test a non-hierarchical order that later history would try to erase.
Beautiful unease12 min read
A square nocturnal painting of a narrow canal with dark water reflecting tan stone walls and chimneys, a small wooden shelter on a dock, foliage in deep shadow, a distant stone arch and five faint stars in a grey sky.

Jean-Charles Cazin, Midnight, 1891

The Stillness That Stays Up Late

Jean-Charles Cazin’s Midnight turns a working canal at Abbeville into a studio memory of night, where silence is built, not found.
Weather & atmosphere11 min read
A brown bottle and a white bowl with eggplants and lemons sit on dark cloth beside a knife and an empty chair.

Preston Dickinson, Still Life, c. 1924

The Table Under Pressure

In Still Life, Preston Dickinson gives a private studio arrangement bodily weight while its table, bowl, and chair pull space in different directions.
Private worlds8 min read
A narrow stream reflects tall trees and a small blue-and-red figure beside a low building in dense green woods.

Charles-François Daubigny, Landscape with a Sunlit Stream, c. 1877

The Stream That Makes a Second Landscape

In Landscape with a Sunlit Stream, Charles-François Daubigny lets a reflected figure and broken light turn a shadowed channel into a second image.
Weather & atmosphere10 min read
Three dead soldiers lie among trees and broken ground drawn in blue, ochre, green, and black.

René Beeh, Dead Scottish Soldiers on the Battlefield near Ypres, 1916

The Record Behind Three Bodies

René Beeh’s 1916 watercolor joins three dead soldiers near Ypres to the measured ground of his wartime work as a surveyor.
Beautiful unease5 min read
A dense seaside crowd sits and walks near a horse and donkey cart beneath trees, with boats on blue water behind.

Maurice Prendergast, On the Beach, No. 3, c. 1915–18. Resized by Lagoon.

How Prendergast Makes a Crowd Legible

In On the Beach, No. 3, Maurice Prendergast uses repeated color, strong outlines, and changing intervals to bind a beach crowd without erasing its individual gestures.
Ritual & transformation6 min read

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Wander by feeling

Beautiful unease Weather & atmosphere Private worlds Ritual & transformation Dream states

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