There was something magical about being a kid and learning about the natural world. I have distinct memories that my favorite field trips in grade school were the ones to the natural sciences museums, seeing the life-sized dioramas of animals in their habitat or see the many fish in a massive aquarium tank. It's one of the things I miss as I get older, just that joy of learning and seeing how the world works. But in the paintings of 2x Juxtapoz cover artist Tiffany Bozic, I always seem to feel a bit of that magic and wonderment again.
Northern California-based Bozic has spent a career illuminating and delicately painting animals and nature in an original hybrid that has both the scientific accuracy and almost storybook narrative that is both approachable and abstract. Her newest and long overdue second book, Unnatural Selections, brings the reader up to date with works from 2012 to the present, one that presents not only the works of such a gifted painter, but shows the depth of which Bozic's pinpoint realistic details have blossomed. And as a viewer, you not only get mesmerized by the animals and settings, but you begin to feel an urgency to not only hold onto these environments in real life, but just how connected you start to become wanting to save the planet. That magical feeling as a child becomes a beloved desperation to maintain our connection to Mother Nature. As scientist Mary Ellen Hannibal so elegantly puts it in the book's Foreword, "The artist seems to insist we see the raw materialness of life as not threatening or undesirable, but as integral." Not only is Unnatural Selections filled with beautiful paintings, it feels vital for our times. —Evan Pricco
The book is published by Gingko Press
