Katrina Haffner’s love of mushrooms began as a child, when she and her family went hiking in the Oregon woods and umbled on some Amanita muscaria. The surprise of their ruddy, otherworldly beauty captured her imagination, and she was nvinced, she says, that fairies were afoot.
Decades later, she still gets a thrill every time she finds amanita in the wild. This is how she stays enchanted—by tapping into the wonder of her first childhood encounter with natural magic. Spending time in wild nature comforts and sustains her artistic spirit; it makes her “feel nurtured by something honest and pure.”
Mushrooms are one of her favorite subjects to paint, she says, partly because they’re so diverse in color and structure, so physically stunning—and even more because they’re mysterious. That’s probably why her pictures are both eerie and charming at once.
The more she learns about mushrooms and the remarkable symbiosis of which they’re capable, she says, the more she realizes that each organism on earth is connected to others in ways we can’t see. So it seems as natural as it is brilliant that in the two gouache paintings shown here, the mushrooms seem to be growing out of the animals. That type of connection is a hallmark of Haffner’s art. When we asked what the fusion means to her, she responded that some people tell her that her images “bring up thoughts of death or suffering,” but she has a different take: “I think it’s healthy to contemplate your mortality and the cycle of life in a way that makes you feel connected instead of disconnected. For me, it’s expressing an emotion, a feeling of being entwined with everything.”
Her work is, more than anything, a celebration. As she puts it, it’s “a reminder of our origin, fragility, and connection to the wild animal spirit.”
See more of Katrina’s work on Instagram @katrina_haffner.
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Enchanted Living is a quarterly print magazine that celebrates all things enchanted.
