Description
The Amanita Muscaria or Fly Agaric must be one of the most easily identified mushrooms found in Irish woodlands. The bright red cap emerges from a cream coloured sheath leaving the pyramid shaped warts we see on the top. These may get washed off by the rain but either way, these mushrooms are really distinctive.
They are very common, found usually under birch trees but I’ve seen them under spruce in my local woodlands. They appear late summer to autumn and always in groups. They are hallucinogenic and considered dangerous but rarely fatal.
I have neutralised the spores with a fixative, please do not hang in direct sunlight or in a damp, humid environment.
Gillian Duggan creates unique paintings using wild mushrooms and her passion for nature and art is visible in her work.
Working with her garden mushrooms, she harnesses their spore dispersal action to create these individual patterns. Some patterns are mirror images of the mushrooms’ gills and others are more abstract when she adds air currents to the process creating a sense of movement, fluidity and, sometimes, playfulness.
Her work reflects the juxtaposition of decay and life, stillness and motion as nature shapes the world we inhabit. Mushrooms and fungi recycle the dead and resupply the building blocks of life. Nothing is ever still. Motion is everywhere.
Each piece of Gillian’s work is unique and original.
Her medium is spores which are dried, fixed, framed, sealed and ready to hang.
Gillian lives in the foothills of the Dublin mountains surrounded by trees, birds, wild animals and, of course, mushrooms.
