A few weeks ago we featured Ardizzone's war paintings (he was in Europe for many, many months during World War Two) and wondered why artists aren't commissioned nowadays to paint in war zones. Well of course they are and a Persephone reader kindly wrote to correct us. So this week on the Post: modern day artists who are brave and calm and committed enough to paint war as it happens. We begin with Arabella Dorman, who started her career as a war artist in Iraq and Afghanistan, was in Homs and Aleppo in Syria in 2018 and Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem in 2017. In her oil painting, Holding On, from Afghanistan, a fiercely protective father cradles his daughter. The father later told Dorman that his child believed her camera was a gun.