Isabella Kirkland

An artist working in the classical naturalistic tradition of John James Audubon and other wildlife painters, Isabella Kirkland subtly bends the form to address the ecological challenges facing the world in the age of global warming. Her paintings, which often fuse the style of Dutch Master still lifes with outdoors tableaux for a dreamlike effect, offer tender interactions of plants and animals—shadowed by the understanding that this garden of earthly delights is in flux, and impermanent.

In recent years, Kirkland has worked on three interwoven series of paintings, Gone, Resurrected, and New, that respectively depict species that have been extinct since 1800, rescued from the brink of annihilation, or freshly discovered. In 2008, the series NOVA (New Species) was shown at the Toledo Art Museum, and she also received a survey at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, DC, that year. A supporter of green causes who has given use of her images to wildlife organizations, Kirkland also allowed a painting of hers to be used as the cover for renowned Pulitzer Prize-winning biologist Edward O. Wilson's book The Future of Life.