Isabella Kirkland, Sausalito, CA

TAXA, 2007–8

Isabella Kirkland's work examines man’s relationship to the natural world through intricate oil paintings in the style of 16th & 17th Century Dutch Master still life.

Her life-size depictions of plants and animals are precisely rendered and anatomically accurate, the result of extensive research at natural history museums.

Taxa is a boxed suite of six large state-of-the-art ink jet prints based on paintings created between 1999 and 2004.

The suite of prints was produced in 2007–08, the dimensions are 35 x 26.5”, they were printed by Trillium Press (now called Electric Works) in San Francisco on Moab Entrada natural white paper with archival inks in an edition of 50. Published by Feature Inc.

Contact Marshall Weber or Felice Tebbe for acquisition or exhibition opportunities.

Descendant—

These plants and animals are all in decline in the mainland United States, Hawaii, or Central America. Most are on either state or federal endangered species lists, while a few are now presumed extinct.

Ascendant—

This picture is of non-native species that have been introduced in some part of the United States or its trust territories. They are all on the increase, as they successfully out-compete native residents.

Trade—

Wild populations of the species in this painting are depleted by collection for both legal and illegal markets.

Collection—

This painting is an exploration of our desire to possess. Featured here are plants and animals that people want to study in depth, to exhibit, or simply to admire at leisure. The plants and animals in this picture have gone to the brink of extinction and been carefully husbanded back, or were presumed extinct and then rediscovered.

Gone—

The sixty-three species depicted in Gone have all become extinct since the mid-1800s and the colonization of the New World.

Artist's Biography—

Kirkland studied at Worcester Museum School in Massachusetts in 1973 and the Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia, in 1975 before moving to San Francisco to study at the San Francisco Art Institute. She is a trained taxidermist. Her work has been included in exhibitions at the Harvard Museum of Natural History; the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco; Feature Inc. in New York; and the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art in Arizona.

She was featured in Artforum’s “Best of 2002: 11 Top Tens,” and in 2004 she received an Individual Artist Grant from the Marin Arts Council.

Kirkland’s “Taxa” series was the subject of an exhibition at the National Academy of Sciences in the spring of 2008 and a solo show will open at the Toledo Art Museum in 2008. She currently resides in Sausalito, California.

This page is maintained by Marshall Weber.