Olly and Suzi: Arctic, Desert, Ocean, Jungle [signed] [first edition]

In pursuit of their animal subjects, artists Olly & Suzi start by situating themselves in the subject's natural habitat--the wild. They approach as closely as possible and, working in tandem, quickly capture their prey on paper, using the day's particular combination of paints, brushes, burnt sticks, natural pigments, even blood, and then offer up the finished portrait to be paw-printed, tooth-bitten, or otherwise marked by the animal for authentication. Their collaborators have included anacondas, crocodiles, polar bears, and great white sharks. Of course, occasionally a leopard decides to rip apart its own image, or a rhino devours the canvas whole. While their art yields paintings of extraordinary beauty and power, Olly & Suzi consider it performance-based and site-specific: sometimes the only thing they come away with from an expedition is their lives. Spare, vibrant, and lyrical, the works that have survived Olly & Suzi's 15 years of adventures in such remote locales as Siberia, the North Pole, and the Galapagos Islands fill the pages of this equally boundary-defying book. Accompanied by dazzling photographs that document the pair's unique process, these paintings take the reader on a dynamic journey to the world's remaining, though endangered, wild places.