Isabella Kirkland
1954–

Isabella Kirkland (born 1954) is an American visual artist and biodiversity researcher. She is known for intricate, representational paintings that straddle art history, natural science and ecological activism. Since the mid-1990s, she has documented biota in series focused on species that are extinct, disappearing, collected or illegally trafficked, or emerging from near-extinction. Her work fuses the classical naturalist tradition of wildlife painters like John James Audubon and the precise rendering style and time-tested oil techniques of 17th-century Dutch Master still life painters. Situated in the contemporary context of global warming, however, her paintings subtly upend such idealized traditions, invoking a sense of accountability in response to the specter of ecological flux and impermanence. New York Times critic Ken Johnson wrote that Kirkland "produces richly atmospheric pictures collectively populated by hundreds of animals. … Updating the peaceable kingdom genre, she is trying to make beautiful paintings of the world at its most beautiful, not for the sake of art but for the sake of our endangered biosphere. She does not preach but communicates an infectious spirit of care."

Kirkland's work belongs to the collections of institutions including the Whitney Museum, Berkeley Art Museum and Saint Louis Art Museum (SLAM). She has exhibited at the National Academy of Sciences, Harvard Museum of Natural History, Field Museum of Natural History (Chicago) and SLAM, among other venues. She is a research associate in aquatic biology at the California Academy of Sciences and has spoken about ecological issues at conferences including several TED events.