STORY BEHIND THE ART OF LUCY MARTIN

16th Annual International

American Society of Botanical Artists and the Horticultural Society of New York

Coral Mushroom

Ramaria formosa

I fell in love with mushrooms after I moved to the Santa Cruz Mountains in California in 2006. The winter is the rainy season here, and the forest is filled with amazing mushrooms. I became fascinated with their beauty and strangeness. There is something that appeals to me about how they grow, an unpredictable, magical quality. They live secretly and suddenly appear when conditions are right. When people see my work, I hope they feel this sense of mystery.

Mushrooms are the fruiting bodies (I love that phrase) of fungi. Fungi are not plants, though they are often grouped with them. It’s interesting that in evolutionary terms, they are actually closer to animals than plants. Fungi can be parasitic, or they can act to decompose organic matter, and many of them are symbiotic with trees and other plants, called mycorrhyzal fungi. The fungus and the tree provide nutrients to each other, each helping the other to thrive. Fungi are inseparable from whatever tree they are growing with. This is one reason that in my paintings I generally include the background, or surroundings of the mushrooms.

My paintings are unlike traditional botanical art, in that I paint mushrooms in their natural environment. I include the leaves, bark, lichen, moss, ferns and so on, among which they grow. I create a scene you might come upon as you walked through the forest: a small landscape of the forest floor.

A painting begins with a walk in the forest. When I find a mushroom I want to paint, I first photograph it, along with the surrounding area. I collect the mushroom and what I find nearby - the redwood twigs, leaves, lichen, stones and even small plants. I bring these things home and arrange them in a container in my studio, and paint from that. I nearly always paint from life. I feel that I can’t get the color, texture and level of detail I want from a photo. I paint the mushrooms first, because they may often last only a day or so. Some, like the Inky Caps, may only last a few hours. I keep the other elements of the composition outdoors in the cool rain. I use photographs for large tree trunks, or anything too big to bring home. 

I paint with gouache and watercolor, combining them freely. Gouache is more opaque than watercolor, which suits the dense, earthy quality I want for my paintings.

I found the coral mushroom in this painting in the woods in Mendocino, near the Pacific coast. I had been walking with a friend in the redwood forest, about to head home, when I saw this mushroom glowing in the dark undergrowth. The brilliant orange against the deep green leaves and dark lichen appealed to me. I love coral mushrooms for their beautiful, complex structure, and this one had an especially arresting color. The intricate, delicate branchings were a challenge to paint. Each new mushroom is a fresh challenge--they are so different. Some are scaly or hairy, some are shiny, some are translucent like jelly. I don’t generally place one mushroom at the center of a composition, but it seemed right in this case. 

I have been concentrating on mushrooms in my painting for the past six years or so. In the future, I hope to travel more to new areas of the country to discover more mushrooms. Painting gives me the greatest happiness: when I am painting, time disappears.

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