Matilda Essig grew up in the eastern woodland of Pennsylvania, in a world full of art and agriculture. She received her BA from Reed College and trained in classical painting and drawing at the Art Students League of New York. After 10 years working in Natural Science Illustration in the Sonoran Desert, she returned to fine art with the tools of the future and began to use digital imaging technology to explore the subtle diversity of open space in the American West. Inspired both by the beauty of grasslands and by her perceptual experiences in traditional illustration, she now portrays her subjects with a fidelity that transcends her own hand. Her work is in private and corporate collections, national parks, and wildlife refuges throughout the American Southwest. Her clientele has included Dr. Jane Goodall, National Geographic, the US Department of the Interior, and Oxford University Press, among others. She lives on five acres of grasslands that she restored in the Apache Highlands of southeast Arizona. She keeps a traditional painting studio too.
FOLIO PLACEMENTS in UNIVERSITY SPECIAL COLLECTIONS
PUBLICATIONS
Capital Institute’s Feildguide to a Regenerative Economy
‘Portraits of Grass: A Story of Art and Restoration from the Apache Highlands Ecoregion’. Ecological Restoration Volume 26, Number 3, test and illustrations by Matilda Essig, University of Wisconsin Press, 2008
The Land Report, Summer 2010. cover and illustrations by Matilda Essig.
Below the Surface: A 21st Century Look at the Prairie. 2009. catalogue from the exhibition, written by Lesley Wright.
Trees of Sonora, by Richard Felger, including illustrations by Matilda Essig, Oxford University Press, 2000
The Ancestress Hypothesis: Visual Art as Adaptation, by Kathryn Coe, illustrations by Matilda Essig, Rutgers University Press 2003
Desert Communities Teacher’s Guide, illustrations by Matilda Essig, published by Saguaro National Park. 1998
Among the Gifts of Native America’, Native People’s Magazine 1992. Story by Jack Weatherford, Photos by Matilda Essig.
Belgian Belgian Draft Horses’, Small Farmer’s Journal Vol 3, #3. 1979. Story and photos by Matilda Essig.
