Most animal lovers choose to show their wildlife appreciation with activism, posters or speeches to spread awareness of the loss of animals in the wild. De Anza student Tamar Assaf chose to show her appreciation through creating fragmented depictions of animals across the world in order to document their endangerment from their habitats.

Born and raised in Israel, Assaf grew up observing insects and small animals on the outskirts of her town as she watched the fields around her replaced by housing developments.

As a child, Assaf was taught stories and lessons from the Bible as part of her cultural heritage, which led her to create her most prominent project, the “Animals of the Bible” series.

“When I moved to California, and started to read different translations of the Bible, I realized that they described different animals with every translation,” she said. Assaf chose to focus on King James’ translation of the Bible for her project because it would restore the original identity of the animals from biblical verses.

Before Assaf could begin her creations, she had to return to her homeland to research her subjects. Her trip was funded by a number of organizations, including the Alice de Bar Memorial Scholarship from De Anza College and the Winsor & Newton Artists’ Material Company, who provided media for the portrayals.

Assaf flew to Israel in late 2008 with a camera in hand to create an extensive library of snapshots for inspiration. Capturing everything from gazelles to grasshoppers, Assaf returned to California to create her portraits.

She began the process of developing “Animals of the Bible,” which began by reviewing the digital collection and sketching the animals from a set of different angles. “I like to choose a single quality that extracts the essence of the animal,” said Assaf. “I want to see just how close I can zoom in for [the animal] to still be recognizable.”

On a single, blank canvas, Assaf uses heavy oil paints as her primary medium, and builds on her canvas layer by layer, sometimes taking weeks to complete due to the slow drying quality of the oils.

The “Animals of the Bible” series reflects on biblical verses and focuses on animals that are normally found in the Middle East or Africa. However, it is not the setting or backgrounds of Tamar Assaf’s paintings that upstage the show. Assaf recollects that some of the initial responses to her paintings were not what she expected.

While painting a close-up of a camel’s hump for the series, her work in progress, reminded some of rugged terrains and mountains one would see off highways.

“I realized that [the fragmented images] forced my viewers to relate to paintings from their inner world,” she said. “It unites people from the three major religions of the world [which are all interconnected].”

As Tamar Assaf waits for her paint to dry, she has already started work on a new project, this time named the “In Flight” series, which according to Assaf is a compilation of large-scale paintings of tiny insects in flight.

“In this series I portray insects in flight as they would be captured through the camera lens,” said Assaf.

The “In Flight” series, like the majority of Assaf’s work, documents the loss of natural habitats and wildlife to remind us all just how destructive humanity can be.