“I am in a constant state of emotional shock by the thought that from top to bottom this entire world is teeming with mystery and life.”
Interview with Tiffany Bozic:
Color: Before this residency, your work was very centered on natural phenomena – birds, plants, insects, and organic materials. Why do you think nature plays such a large role in your work? Tiffany: I find these natural elements extremely important and beautiful. I live and work in a very gritty industrial environment (Oakland, CA). As a result, I consider it essential to travel to wild places and learn as much as possible about the natural world. So in a way I am bringing these elements back in my work to remember the places and things that I have seen. The paintings seem to express the kind of weightlessness that occurs in the ocean – like a suspended motion in water. How did you come to so intimately understand the mechanics of marine locomotion? I know nothing about the mechanics – I just pay attention to the fluid rhythmic movements of things. I do work from photographs I took of the dead specimens – but this is limiting because aside from some of the detail, the actual specimen is very dead and it’s hard to bring it back to life so to speak. This is why it is important to do my homework, and study the living, including short film clips, or whatever I can get my hands on.
(top center) Living Pajama Cardinalfish (Sphaeramia nematoptera) tank installation. (middle left) A Starfish specimen regenerating after a battle. (bottom left) Live Hermit Crab tank installation.
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Tell me about working with Dr. Rich Mooi. What kind of information was he able to share with you and how did you apply them to your work? We had no structure – it was very freeform. We just sort of hit it off right away and we started digging through the collection. He would tell me stories and I would ask questions. He is a brilliantly captivating person and I was extremely inspired. I could have painted 100 variations on each specimen. There were thousands of specimens just in the IZ & G Collections. Most people don’t even know that this resource exists. So if this project in fact does materialize into a yearly program, it will be interesting to see the different artistic variations. It is our hope that one day we can create new ways to show a younger generation the value and importance of learning to consider our environment.
Can you explain what elements make your work different, from say, a diagram or museum diorama? My work is very emotional and is valued for a different purpose – what that value is may vary from each individual to the next. That is one thing that sets it apart from scientific illustrations. Although I am very interested in detail, I am very uninterested in recording specific facts. It is important that if I paint a sea urchin or a bird, I want to understand its complexities and patterns before I make it my own. For example, I will try to count how many feathers are in the secondary coverts in the wing of a bird and the sea urchins may only live at such and such depth, and have so many spines, and only be this color, OK, but what happens if I turn it into something else? What would it look like if I did this or that? If I made that area bright red, how would that affect the overall feeling? So I play around with it. Can you explain a little bit about your process? Your choices of paint, method of composition? I have developed a very complicated technique for painting. I still don’t know how to describe this process, especially because it is always evolving and changing. But basically it goes like this: mostly I paint very watered down thin acrylic layers on maple panel so the grain of the wood is mostly showing. Usually this involves drawing a subject on the wood first, then covering it up with masking tape, cutting the contours of that shape out with an X-Acto blade, so it remains protected. Then I do a series of washes and figure out the environment, using small pieces of sandpaper to sand out the ‘highlights’. Take the tape off, then go in and paint the subject with the detail, tiny brushstrokes. It isn’t that different to watercolor, where you use the white of the paper as your “white”, and you add darker and darker shades around it. Since the grain is always visible - the paint seeps into the grain, so I can’t afford to make a mistake - I have to have a pretty good idea of what the finished piece will look like before I begin. In a way it’s a fun puzzle to get the right sequence and I’ve been at it for about 8 or 9 years now because it continually challenges me.
I’m fascinated with how relationships between organisms are expressed in your work. When you create these compositions, are you thinking about actual biological relations (like predation, symbiosis) in addition to how forms and colors integrate visually? Yes. Once I understand these ‘natural’ relationships, my mind races to find other examples found in nature to explain the way that I feel. Some of the images I create are very unnatural, if not then I make it so. In some ways, I am speaking in metaphor. If there is a universal visual language that I can find in this world to communicate what I believe is true for all living things. A blueprint? A code? I want to try to explore that… Do you think your works, in a way, relate to human relationships? Or put another way, what can humans gain from a reflection on other life forms? What have you gained? Absolutely. That is a good question. The visions derive from my basic human desires and needs. A few years back I painted a ‘weak’ baby Booby bird tied to an open bleeding heart, floating in a sea of blood. I read somewhere that the Blue Footed Booby mothers, if faced with short food supply, will choose to feed the biggest strongest of their babies while the weak get pushed to the edge of the nest and waste away. Makes sense, though it is unfair to say that this particular adaptive trait is ‘mean’, it still hurts. It is what it is. If times are tough, you better make it out with one than chance it and lose both babies right? At the time I was experiencing a lot of confusion in a relationship, so I had to create this image as way to make sense of my situation. Later the same year I painted two seahorses connected by frozen tendrils; completely dissolved of their strengths. Seahorses have great metaphorical powers because the roles are reversed in many ways between the males and females. I am exploring similarities with my subjects, so it’s important for me to understand what I can about them first, in turn I understand myself on a neutral, distinctive and honest level. Hopefully my paintings reveal this.