By Alliance Communications Coordinator Amy Durr
“These works are my form of activism,” says Isabella Kirkland in her 2024 TED Talk The Beauty of Wildlife — and an Artistic Call to Protect It. “My artistic practice is an investigation into humanity’s relationship with nature, both what we have, but also what we’ve lost.”
TED calls Kirkland’s work “a creative stand against ecological despair.” Although I wholeheartedly agree, I’ll admit it’s difficult for me not to become overwhelmed with eco-anxiety when looking at her intricate, thoughtful paintings which present obliteration with careful attention.
A Series of Loss and Annihilation
In her six painting Taxa series, Kirkland focuses on ecological destruction as described by her captions, moving from declining through problematic, ascendant non-native species to those that have miraculously recovered and those that haven’t:
- Descendant depicts plants and animals all in decline in mainland US, Hawaii or Central America. While a few are ‘presumed extinct,’ most of them are on either state or federal endangered species lists.
- Ascendant shows 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 are successfully out-competing native residents.
- Trade features wild populations of species depleted by collection for both legal and illegal markets. Wildlife is the fourth largest black market commodity in the world, ranking behind guns, drugs and humans.
- Collection showcases plants and animals that people want to study in depth [which can be essential for scientific research on species preservation], to exhibit or simply to admire at leisure [which can significantly contribute to species loss]. Ownership of many of these species is thought to confer status on the owner.
- Back reveals plants and animals in this picture that went to the brink of extinction but came back. Some were carefully nurtured into survival by various levels of human intervention, including habitat manipulation, captive breeding and reintroduction. Others were presumed extinct and then re-found, by accident or design. Such a species lucky enough to return from the edge of oblivion is sometimes referred to as ‘Lazarus taxon’.
- Gone calls attention to sixty-three species which have all become extinct since the mid 1800’s and the colonization of the New World.
In all, the Taxa series covers just under 400 species of animals and plants, with Back being the lone bright spot.
Gone But Never Forgotten
In Gone, the painting we feature above, the eyes of the passenger pigeon and the laughing owl seem to glow in a way that makes me long for their survival. I want to root for them, but alas, it’s too late.
The last confirmed laughing owl was found dead in Canterbury, South Island, in July 1914. The last passenger pigeon, Martha, died on September 1, 1914, decades before I was born.
Kirkland’s website tells the tragic tale:
“The sixty-three species painted in GONE have all become extinct since the mid 1800’s and the colonization of the New World. The current high rate of extinction is humanity’s doing; we’re the ones who disrupt and degrade habitat, alter soil and water, and warm the atmosphere.
Of the sixty-four species of birds endemic to Hawaii, thirty-three have gone extinct: island species are particularly vulnerable and many are represented here. “Where ever humans migrated around the world, edible fauna went extinct. Extinction is thus far not reversible.”
Every bit of this planet contains the “necessary wisdom and extraordinary generosity,” of nature, as Suzanne Simard, author of Finding the Mother Tree, reminds us. In this context, each lost species feels like a personal blow — to me and to many who care about the natural world.
I try to channel that grief into a fierce commitment to protect what’s left. With the threats only accelerating, it’s vital to feel the sorrow without being paralyzed by it. When I acknowledge and share these emotions, I find strength — and discover I’m not alone.
A Heady Mixture of Science and Art
Isabella Kirkland describes her fascinating and lengthy artistic process in her recent TED Talk:
“A painting like this one, called Understory, begins with a rubric and a database, not with drawings. The rubric is the rule of the painting. For this one, it is ‘these are new species.’ And the database is built out of a sampling of plants and animals that fit that rubric.
“It took me about four months of research, probably two or three months of drawing, and another six months of painting to complete Understory. Most of my complex, complicated paintings take roughly a year on average.”
“Isabella Kirkland works in the meticulous and time-consuming techniques developed by 17th century Dutch painters,” according to Hosfelt Gallery. She purposefully chose an archaic artistic method to convey the critical urgency of right now.
Her mode of depiction is an adaptation of the still life genre and 19th century natural history illustration — traditions revered for their accurate depictions of flora and fauna before the advent of photography. Kirkland’s paintings enable a form of physical preservation of species that may otherwise soon disappear forever.
Moreover, her choice of 17th century methods strikes me as especially powerful, since it was a time of colonialism and expansionism. It was the beginning of the disappearance of many species as human dominance over nature began to take hold.
Waking Up to How We Are Dominating and Destroying Our World
Paying attention is always a gift and sometimes a curse. I believe we are called to pay attention and to bear witness to what’s happening to the flora and fauna of the Anthropocene, our geological epoch that marks the period during which our human activity has become the dominant influence on the Earth’s climate, environment and ecosystems.
This brings to mind Joanna Macy’s thoughts about her work as quoted in Let This Radicalize You:
“Back then we were trying to scare people to pay attention. You don’t [know] how bad it is with climate change, you don’t know how many nuclear warheads are on high alert. Get roused. And it wasn’t working. People thought the public was apathetic. But I realized…it was not that people didn’t care or didn’t know, but that people were afraid…
“So this has been a lot of my work. To help people open to and become enamored of the idea that they’d really like to see what was going on. And to open the eyes and open the heart to discover, again and again, …the depths of your caring and commitment to life.”
Isabella Kirkland is also doing the work of encouraging people to open their eyes and really see. “I think of my paintings as alarm clocks in a way. They are reminders of what’s at stake. The only real problem is we keep pushing the snooze button.”
About Isabella Kirkland
Kirkland was born in 1954 in Old Lyme, Connecticut. She attended Guildford College in North Carolina and Virginia Commonwealth University, before studying sculpture at the San Francisco Art Institute.
In 2004, Kirkland suffered neural and motor control damage from parasitic infection after a tropical roundworm attacked part of her spinal cord. In 2008, Kirkland received the Wynn Newhouse Award, which recognizes contributions of artists with disabilities to contemporary art.
Kirkland has been a featured speaker at numerous biodiversity and ecological conferences and events, including TEDx DeExtinction (2013), The Long Now Foundation (2016) and the TED Countdown Summit 2023. She exhibited work at TED 2007. Kirkland has been recognized with a Wynn Newhouse Award (2008) and grants from George Sugarman Foundation (2005) and Marin Arts Council (2004).
Kirkland lives in Sausalito, California with her husband, Chris Tellis, on a yellow ferryboat docked in the San Francisco Bay.