Isabella Kirkland
Isabella Kirkland
Isabella
Kirkland
b. 1954 STUDIO IN SAUSALITO, CA
An amateur scientist (and research associate at the California Academy of Sciences), Isabella Kirkland delights in constructing complex images of multiple species. She has documented endangered and extinct animals, recently discovered species, and those that occupy very specific habitats. Her work invites us in to contemplate, to pay attention, and perhaps to take action.
In Emergent, Kirkland paints an impossible view above the treetops of species that spend their lives out of human sight, 200 feet up in the canopy. As with other works from her Nova series, each creature found here has been identified by scientists only in the past two decades, a comment on the vastness and enduring mystery of life on our planet.
In Emergent, Kirkland paints an impossible view above the treetops of species that spend their lives out of human sight, 200 feet up in the canopy. As with other works from her Nova series, each creature found here has been identified by scientists only in the past two decades, a comment on the vastness and enduring mystery of life on our planet.
I don’t want to be a scientific illustrator. I really want to talk to a different audience with this work. I want to celebrate this stuff and get people interested in it. You can’t protect something if you don’t value it or know what it’s for.
— Isabella Kirkland
