By The Sea 🐚

Painting of the day by Gilles Leroux

                             By The Sea  🐚

When I bought this beautiful seascape painted on a conk, Ganoderma applanatum, I intended to paint over it: only, I fell in love with it.

I had never thought of using conks as a canvas for painting until I was introduced to them by my mother-in-law. I remember one, in particular, she had painted with a forest scene. It was two conks attached by a stick which she cleverly transformed into a fallen tree lying across a stream connecting the two sides of the forest floor. Her husband skillfully created a mama raccoon and her two babies out of Teasle seed and placed them on the log crossing the stream below. I thought it was such a genius idea creating a 3 - d painting from quirky fungi: ever since then, I have been on the lookout for one just like it.

When I do get the opportunity to work on one of these lovely fungi, I love to smell their heady fragrance when I use my wood-burning pen in creating the design: Autumn enters the room, and its as if I'm still out in the woods, walking on musty fallen leaves, collecting fungi.




If you haven't tried painting on a conk, maybe, now is the time to try. Take an autumn walk, collect a few shelf mushrooms, and bring back a little of fall into your home.

The conk with the beautiful sea shall remain in its original embodiment, and I will take another walk into the woods, maybe get lucky and find the one.




"By the sea, by the sea, by the beautiful sea.

You and me, you and me, oh how happy will be.

I like to be beside, beside, beside the sea,

beside the seaside with you."




Some Like It Hot (1959) M M IN BEACH SCENE