Tara Tucker has created a stunning bestiary of animals crossed with flora or having bizarre relationships with other species. Maybe the fact that she often accompanied her mother to Santa Barbara Natural History Museum, where mum volunteered to learn taxidermy and Tara was assigned to classify and number bones and skeletons, has something to do with her vast interest in the animal kingdom. At that time, she either wanted to be or marry the illustrator working in the lab for the biologists, who traveled all around the world to collect specimens and draw the animals.
Nowadays, based in Oakland, California, visual artist and art instructor still uses the encyclopedia of animal books that she purchased as a child. Through the technique of graphite this documentary nut, always attempting to know more details about animals and their behaviours, disrupts in these images the natural cycle that is gorgeous and seems miserable at the time. “I want my animals to come from a future natural world where there aren’t people anymore”. Even in Tara’s world, dogs would be humans’ best friends.
More at taratucker.blogspot.com & www.renabranstengallery.com – Via itfashion
