Welcome to the world of fungi, where sprawling webs of mycelium weave beneath our feet, and microscopic spores fill the air we breathe. Its fruiting body, the mushroom, might be delicious, nutritious, mind-expanding or deadly, and without it our forests would not exist. Where I live, in Archway, we benefit from several wooded and parkland spaces right on our doorstep: Highgate and Queen’s Woods, Parkland Walk, Waterlow Park and Hampstead Heath; places in which to breathe deeply and walk slowly. Beneath the canopy of the trees I find myself looking down, intrigued by this subterranean network, the lifeblood of the forest, hidden in the earth and emerging from the darkness.

Having branched away from animals more than 1billion years ago, fungi are neither plant nor animal, sharing more DNA with us than they do with plants. They are master decomposers, transforming and moving energy so that it may generate and support new life. They have the ability to decompose plastics and petrochemicals, and to convert toxic waste into chemical energy for growth. They are intelligent communicators, explorers and decision makers, with species that interact with plants and trees, swapping nutrients and energy in a system referred to as the Wood Wide Web. Without fungi we would not have bread, beer, cheese, chocolate, coffee, wine… and yet, we know very little about this abundant kingdom. There are thought to be over 2.5million fungi species on Earth*, with more than 90 percent of those as yet unknown to science. Most fungi live out of sight.

In my 2024 exhibition, Fungarium, I took a tentative step into these dark spaces, and continued this journey the following year in Fungarium: Rambling On. My pencil drawings are studied celebrations of the mushroom. I have been collecting dried specimens, observing the whorling, twisted shapes that occur upon dehydration, with gnarly forms that conjure fantastical characters straight out of folklore. In inks I take a dive into the subterranean realm of mycelium, the microscopic, vegetative part of a fungus that weaves beneath our feet. As an aphantasic, I do not experience mental imagery, so here I just see what happens, creating imagined realms by letting the inks express themselves in damp paper before working over in more detailed layers – if I cannot see then I can imagine.