Isabella Kirkland is a trained taxidermist and artist whose detailed oil paintings examine man's relationship to the natural world. Her life-size depictions of plants and animals are precisely rendered and anatomically accurate; the result of extensive research at natural history museums. Kirkland attended Guilford College in Greensboro, North Carolina, and Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, before moving to San Francisco to study at the San Francisco Art Institute. She has had solo exhibitions at the Toledo Art Museum, Ohio, the National Academy of Sciences, Washington, DC, and the Sun Valley Center for the Arts, Idaho, and her work been included in group shows at the Field Museum, Chicago, the Tucson Museum of Art, de Pury & Luxembourg, Zurich, the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, and the Harvard Museum of Natural History, among other venues. Since 2006, Kirkland has been a research associate in the Department of Aquatic Biology at the California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco. She currently lives in Sausalito, California, and is represented by Feature Inc., New York. Kirkland’s series NOVA, which focuses on species of flora and fauna that are new to scientific literature within the last 20 years, is currently on view at the David Brower Center in Berkeley, California.
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In Collection:
Bates College Museum of Art
TaxaBucknell University, Samek Art Gallery
TaxaDartmouth College, Hood Museum
TaxaSt. Louis Art Museum (SLAM)
TaxaUniversity of Kansas, Spencer Museum of Art
TaxaUniversity of Minnesota
TaxaWellesley College, Davis Museum and Cultural Center
Taxa