Hand Painted Ferns & Fungi

Ferns & Fungi

Originals

come back believer in shade believer in. silence and elegance believer in ferns believer in patience believer in the rain

-S. Merwin

I started this series in autumn, when the forest was shedding off summer’s green and the air was damp with the smell of falling leaves. We went mushroom hunting, not too successfully, but it sparked an idea. One that has been growing for a while.

Once in Croatia, a sailboat captain told me about a Japanese biologist who studies the collective consciousness of fungi.  The details have left me but what remains is the fascination. 

Mushrooms are the fruit of fungi, the part you don’t see is mycelium, this mysterious membrane that connects each mushroom and creates a network of communication. 

The fairy rings are real. Mushrooms always sprout up in a perfect circle when there is enough space to grow. These patterns are not new, they appear like harmonies throughout the natural world. This is not to take the magic literally- if the fairies are dancing there is a reason we cannot see them.; but we do sense something in the strange phenomena of fungi. Maybe because we like plants grow out of this world, and whispering it calls us back, softly believer, in forests, in the smell of fall believer, in the shifting of ferns.