New show about soil on canvas

SEVEN years’ worth of fungi foraging is on display at the Mercure as part of an art exhibition until mid-June.

The show features more than 200 oil paintings of different mushrooms from visual artist Rosalind Lawson, with the subject of each portrait picked from the vicinity of her home in Napoleons.

Called Landscape Over Time and Place, Lawson said the display was inspired by her immediate surrounds.

“We’ve got 25 acres of bushland and grassland where we live so this is an environmental project,” she said.

“I wanted to document the fungi within a kilometre of the house. It’s taken me years to get to this stage and I found two other specimens the other day, so this’ll be ongoing.

“I started off documenting the native flora, small plants, but fungi was the thing.

“At the moment it’s a wonderful time to be showing them because there’s so much interest in fungi and mycelium and what it does for the health of the forest.”

The works are clustered together with 10 large canvas panels crafted by Lawson’s husband Paddy Caulfield.

Lawson has been a professional creative since receiving a Diploma in Fine Art at RMIT during the 1970s, and taught painting, drawing, and papermaking at Federation University’s Arts Academy for 20 years.

The exhibition was launched by fellow artist Merle Hathaway, and Lawson said there’s definitely an environmental message in the show.

“I’d like people to, first of all, be in awe of the beauty of fungus but also to learn more about the importance of it in our natural environment,” she said.

All works are for sale, with small pieces at $180 and larger ones at $200 and Landscape Over Time and Place will be on display until Sunday, 18 June.