top of page

MyCommunity

Type
Digital drawing
Year
2024 - 2025

Inspiration and composition

MyCommunity â€¯is a black-and-white digital drawing that intricately portrays the underside of mushrooms forming fungi, focusing on their reproductive structures such as gills and folds. These elements, essential to fungal reproduction, are rendered with precise line work to highlight their intricate natural architecture. Inspired by her fascination with fungi’s biological and ecological roles, Heine utilized a digital pencil tool with fixed widths and two-line thicknesses to achieve the fine detail required to convey their complexity. 

Heine’s decision to omit colour from the piece was deliberate, as she felt vibrant hues might reduce the subtleties of the gills' patterns and textures. The absence of colour enhances the visual depth, inviting the viewer to appreciate the beauty of fungi’s reproductive anatomy, typically hidden beneath its hat. Her composition is guided by curiosity and close observation, inspired by her fungi-hunting walks and the unpredictable yet balanced forms found in nature. She played with the arrangement of shapes to achieve what she describes as “the right ratio of chaos and tranquillity”. She later realized that her aesthetics echo a subconscious influence from a line-art wall drawing in her partner’s apartment. Much like that piece, which continuously reveals new details upon each viewing, her work captures the ever-unfolding complexity of fungi. 

Connection to 'Mysteries in Science'

Through MyCommunity, Heine draws attention to the mysterious and often underappreciated world of fungi. Despite their ecological importance and vast diversity, much about fungi remains unknown, with only a fraction of species identified. By focusing on their reproductive structures, she highlights an essential yet rarely seen aspect of fungal life, inviting viewers to reconsider the role fungi play in sustaining ecosystems. 

Heine’s work is a bridge between art and science, using visual storytelling to make complex biological concepts more accessible. She hopes the piece inspires curiosity and wonder, encouraging viewers to delve deeper into the hidden intricacies of the natural world and to appreciate the artistry inherent in life’s most enigmatic organisms. 

crop Claudia Heine - RGB.png

About Claudia Heine

The Artist

The Netherlands

Claudia Heine is a Master’s student in Environmental Biology at the Graduate School of Life Sciences, Utrecht University, with a strong molecular biology background. Her academic journey and deep curiosity about the fungal kingdom profoundly influence her artistic explorations. A self-taught artist, Heine has been drawing since childhood, though she briefly stepped away from her creative pursuits during her undergraduate studies. Rediscovering art has been a way to balance her scientific work, often combining both passions during her long train commutes. For Heine, fungi represent an awe-inspiring intersection of life’s mystery and complexity, a theme she embraces both in her research and in her artwork. 

bottom of page