Beyond Biology

2013-Ongoing    I began drawing at the Grant Museum of Zoology, University College London, in 2013, and continue to do so. It wasn’t until 2019 that I turned the sketches into paintings which have now become my series “Beyond Biology.”

  

Images Copyright Of:
SUZANNE STRYK
sea turtle

sea turtle | 5.5" x 8" | pen on paper

Images Copyright Of:
SUZANNE STRYK
Bestiary (Sea Turtle)

Bestiary (Sea Turtle) | 2019 | 12" x 12" | acrylic and mixed media on plexiglas

Images Copyright Of:
SUZANNE STRYK
aardvark infant

aardvark infant | 5.5" x 8" | pen on paper

Images Copyright Of:
SUZANNE STRYK
Bestiary (infant aardvark)

Bestiary (infant aardvark) | 2019 | 12" x 12" | acrylic and mixed media on plexiglas

Images Copyright Of:
SUZANNE STRYK
whale foetus

whale foetus | 5.5" x 8" | pen on paper

Images Copyright Of:
SUZANNE STRYK
Bestiary (whale foetus)

Bestiary (whale foetus) | 2019 | 12" x 12" | acrylic and mixed media on plexiglas

Images Copyright Of:
SUZANNE STRYK
bat

bat | 5.5" x 8" | pen on paper

Images Copyright Of:
SUZANNE STRYK
Bestiary (Bat)

Bestiary (Bat) | 2020 | 12" x 12" | acrylic and mixed media on plexiglas

Images Copyright Of:
SUZANNE STRYK
flying squirrel

flying squirrel | 5.5" x 8" | pen on paper

Images Copyright Of:
SUZANNE STRYK
Bestiary (Flying Squirrel)

Bestiary (Flying Squirrel) | 2019 | 12" x 12" | acrylic and mixed media on plexiglas

Images Copyright Of:
SUZANNE STRYK
lizard

lizard | 8" x 5.5" | pen on paper

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SUZANNE STRYK
Bestiary (Flying Lizard)

Bestiary (Flying Lizard) | 2019 | 12" x 12" | acrylic and mixed media on plexiglas

Images Copyright Of:
SUZANNE STRYK
monkey and other animals

monkey and other animals | 5.5" x 8" | pen on paper

Images Copyright Of:
SUZANNE STRYK
Bestiary (Monkey)

Bestiary (Monkey) | 2019 | 12" x 12" | acrylic and mixed media on plexiglas

Images Copyright Of:
SUZANNE STRYK
rabbit

rabbit | 5.5" x 8" | pen on paper

Images Copyright Of:
SUZANNE STRYK
Bestiary (Rabbit)

Bestiary (Rabbit) | 2019 | 12" x 12" | acrylic and mixed media on plexiglas

Images Copyright Of:
SUZANNE STRYK
dissected pigeon

dissected pigeon | 8" x 5.5" | pen on paper

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SUZANNE STRYK
Bestiary (Pigeon)

Bestiary (Pigeon) | 2019 | 12" x 12" | acrylic and mixed media on plexiglas

Images Copyright Of:
SUZANNE STRYK
orangutan

orangutan | 5.5" x 8" | pen on paper

Images Copyright Of:
SUZANNE STRYK
Bestiary (orangutan)

Bestiary (orangutan) | 2020 | 12" x 12" | acrylic and mixed media on plexiglas

Images Copyright Of:
SUZANNE STRYK
dissected brains

dissected brains | 5.5" x 8" | pen on paper

Images Copyright Of:
SUZANNE STRYK
Bestiary (dog brain)

Bestiary (dog brain) | 2019 | 12" x 12" | acrylic and mixed media on plexiglas

Images Copyright Of:
SUZANNE STRYK
toad

toad | 8" x 5.5" | pen on paper

Images Copyright Of:
SUZANNE STRYK
Bestiary (Surinam Toad)

Bestiary (Surinam Toad) | 2020 | 12" x 12" | acrylic and mixed media on plexiglas

I spend a month or more in England every year. During this time you can find me drawing at London’s Grant Museum of Zoology (founded as a teaching collection in 1828), where old specimens float in jars of methylated spirits or peer from glass cases. There’s a range of animals boxed or shelved or pickled there, from extinct dodo bones to a common pigeon, plucked and sliced open, its ashen heart revealed. Some specimens were even dissected by the likes of Thomas Huxley and other contemporaries of Darwin.

Entering the Grant through heavy wooden doors, I leave the chaotic London streets behind to enter this quiet cabinet of curiosities. I’m in my element there since I’m obsessed with how we alter the living world through collecting.

But what lures me to draw certain specimens? It’s difficult to explain. (A taxidermied animal posed in a “habitat” wouldn’t have the same effect.) At one time, I thought it was a gut reaction because I often feel the animal’s gesture within my own body. Yet while that’s part of it, there’s something more. That “something” has to do with the animal’s remote expression, an expression far removed from the creature’s scientific purpose, while also equally removed from what it once was in the wild.

After drawing at the Grant, I transpose my quick studies of each specimen—be they whole or dissevered—into painted portraits. I nestle those images beneath layers of suggestively painted Plexiglas, rewilding the animals not to the natural world but to our own untamed vision, beyond biology.

Bestiary (Stag Beetle)   12 x 12 inches    Mixed media    2020

 

 

 

 

 

grant museum exterior

The Grant Museum of Zoology on Gower Street, London

 

 

Collecting the Wild / 30 x 24 inches / acrylic on canvas /  2017

[The whale, turtle, lizard, and snake are all based on specimens at the Grant Museum.]