Tasmanian natural history artist Tim Squires has released a suite of limited edition prints illustrating five endemic Tasmanian animals.
The colours were so vivid that I almost cried when I realised just how beautiful thylacines must have been – incredibly subtle light and dark tan browns and deep, rich midnight blacks, gently blending and flowing into each other across the animal’s shoulders, before moving down to gradually gather into the distintive black stripes. At that moment all of the thylacine images that I had studied came together in my imagination, and I could see the living animal very clearly in my mind …
Says Tim
I HAVE been interested in Tasmanian wildlife for a long time, and the endemic animals are very important as they represent the last survivors of many species that are now extinct on the Australian mainland, and therefore have the island of Tasmania as their last safe refuge.
Whenever possible I have worked from live animals in their native habitats or in wildlife parks, as well as photographs taken by myself or provided to me by wildlife photographer Dave Watts. I also looked at a range of zoological reference books, and became very interested in the historical illustrated works published by John Gould, and his artists Joseph wolf, Edward Lear, and Henry Constantine Richter. Early colonial art and illustrated documentation from scientific research expeditions and voyages of discovery also gave me a lot of inspiration, and the work of artists such as Ferdinand Bauer, Charles-Alexandre Lesueur and Sydney Parkinson was quite influential.
A major challenge was drawing the thylacine, or Tasmanian Tiger. I studied all of the historical visual documentation that I could find, including photographs, archival film footage of captive thylacines, colonial paintings, etchings and drawings, and preserved museum specimens. I also looked closely at the thylacine’s surviving relatives – the quolls, and the Tasmanian devil – to try and complete the mental picture of what a living thylacine would look like if you could actually get close enough to look into its eyes.
The penny really dropped for me when I went to study the preserved thylacines in the South Australian Museum in Adelaide. Zoology Department curator Cath Kemper showed me a 1912 thylacine skin that had been kept in a special drawer away from damaging light rays, and the skin’s natural colours had been remarkably well preserved. The colours were so vivid that I almost cried when I realised just how beautiful thylacines must have been – incredibly subtle light and dark tan browns and deep, rich midnight blacks, gently blending and flowing into each other across the animal’s shoulders, before moving down to gradually gather into the distintive black stripes. At that moment all of the thylacine images that I had studied came together in my imagination, and I could see the living animal very clearly in my mind, but getting the image down onto paper was the hardest part – the whole process took about six months. I’m definately not a fast worker with things like that.
I chose five of my favorite drawings and published the Animals of Tasmania suite of limited edition prints in 1998, but following problems with their packaging and distribution, I withdrew the prints from sale and placed them in storage until I could find a way to be happy with their presentation.
I became really busy with other work commitments, and pursued some other personal interests. I also did some travelling and visited Canada, Japan, and the Hawaiian Islands, but during the whole time I was often thinking about my prints, and trying to work out the best way of marketing and distributing them.
For a long time I couldn’t find enough time to properly tackle those problems and get the project back up and running, but now, with the presentation and packaging finally figured out, I am very happy to have the prints available again.
I have a website with full details of the work, together with a weblog to enable comment and discussion at www.timsquires.com
