2023 Wild Wonder Nature Journaling Conference Teachers and Speakers
The Wild Wonder Nature Journaling Conference is an annual event that gathers people who are passionate about nature, art, science, curiosity, and wonder to share ideas, learn from each other, support each other, inspire each other, and have fun together in nature’s beauty.
We are so grateful to the stellar team of 30+ teachers, journalers, writers, authors, artists, and thought leaders in nature, nature journaling, nature writing, visual thinking, and conservation, who will share their skills with the community. Meet them below.
NOTE: The list below is in alpha order by last name. Our teacher and speaker team is subject to change.
Alex Boon is an artist and nature journaling educator from East Devon, UK. He earned a Ph.D. in environmental science before working in postdoctoral research and scientific communication roles. Alex left academia, moved to the rural south-west of the UK, and started his first nature journal in 2016. He now teaches both online and in-person workshops and courses and is active on YouTube and Instagram. His style is inspired by the British tradition of artists recording nature, particularly Edith Holden, Beatrix Potter, and Charles Tunnicliffe. His mission is to promote the wider uptake of nature journaling in the UK.
https://www.alexboonart.com
https://www.instagram.com/alexboonart
Robin Lee Carlson is an author and natural science illustrator with a particular interest in how landscapes and ecological communities change over time. Her first book, The Cold Canyon Fire Journals, was published in 2022 by Heyday, and her work has also appeared in The Common, the literary journal of Amherst College, and in Arnoldia, the magazine of the Harvard University Arboretum. After earning a bachelor’s degree in evolutionary biology at UC Santa Cruz and a master’s degree from the University of Chicago, Robin spent many years working on stream habitat restoration projects in California for the Pacific States Marine Fisheries Commission. As an illustrator, her artwork is grounded in observing and documenting the world around her as it unfolds. She has created artwork for interpretive panels, posters, informational backdrops, species and habitat information cards, and playground equipment for a range of environmental organizations and agencies.
www.robinleecarlson.com https://www.instagram.com/anthropocenesketchbook/
Maria Coryell-Martin is an expeditionary artist following the tradition of traveling artists as naturalists and educators. In 2004, after graduating from Carleton College, Maria embarked on a year-long Watson Fellowship to explore remote landscapes through art. This experience sparked a resolve to continue working as an expeditionary artist focused on polar and glacier science and to inspire environmental awareness in audiences of all ages. Maria’s travels have brought her face-to-face with polar bears, leopard seals, emperor penguins, and narwhals. A memorable experience juggling clumsy sketching tools while crawling in the sand for hours to monitor walruses on a small island in eastern Greenland inspired Maria to create the Art Toolkit, an all-in-one sketching watercolor kit.
Stephanie A. Dole, Ph.D. has been educating the public about terrestrial arthropods since 1997. As Beetlelady, she presents original educational programs for all ages throughout the San Francisco Bay Area in California. Her Pop-Up Bug Museum is a traveling exhibit that incorporates nature journaling as a tool for exploring the fascinating world of arthropods. Dr. Dole’s research experience includes surveys of tropical bark beetle diversity in the Amazon and the discovery of new species of beetles throughout the world. She uses nature journaling as a tool for her own explorations of nature, as well as a way to teach connection with nature through bugs.
Róisín Curé is an Irish sketcher, teacher, bestselling author, podcaster, cartoonist, sewer, YouTuber, and author. A passion for the natural world led to an MSc in Earth Sciences (UCG, 2003) but the call to follow art proved louder. Years of frustrated ambition passed rearing children in isolation, but the discovery of urban sketching in 2012 while living in the Mauritian tropics changed everything. She has taught sketching workshops all over Europe, including at USk Symposia (Porto 2018 and Amsterdam 2019). The pandemic forced her teaching online and today she is the leader of a beloved worldwide community hundreds strong. She is an obsessive maker, designing and developing various kits for the outdoor sketcher, from 3D-printed paintboxes to canvas field cases, which are sold all over the world. She is the author of An Urban Sketcher's Galway (2019), The Urban Sketching Handbook: Drawing Expressive People (2020, also available in Spanish), and Dublin In Sketches And Stories (2021). She sees the comedy in everything.
Ian de Hoog is a Canadian artist and teacher working primarily in watercolour. He is an active member of the Semiahmoo Arts Society and the Federation of Canadian Artists. As an instructor, Ian is a frequent contributor to the Visiting Artists series for the Opus Arts Supply chain in British Columbia and is a watercolour instructor for the Shadbolt Centre for Fine Arts in Burnaby, BC and Winslow Art Center on Bainbridge Island, WA. Ian has also given workshops and demonstrations to different art groups and societies throughout BC.
For over forty years, British artist-explorer Tony Foster has painted en plein air, a practice that has taken him to wild places around the world. Foster documents the experience of his travels moving slowly on foot or via canoe or raft to encounter flora, fauna, people, and objects, recording his observations through daily diary notes and painted or legally collected souvenirs which are essential elements of his artworks. His skill as a watercolorist has enabled him to articulate the beauty and physical experience of being in nature’s most remote places and has led him to create thematically related series of artworks, or Journeys. Since 1982, Foster has completed 18 Journeys including his most recent, Watercolour Diaries from the Green River, which began its U.S. tour May 2023 at the Whitney Western Art Museum in Cody, Wyoming. Foster’s artworks offer detailed and powerful insights into place and, in their specificity, encourage audiences to marvel at nature and to preserve and protect it. Tony Foster’s Journeys have been shown at the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT; Royal Watercolor Society, London; Frye Art Museum, Seattle, WA; Royal Geographical Society, London; Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Washington, D.C.; Phoenix Art Museum, AZ; and The Foster Museum, Palo Alto, CA.
Sushma Hegde is a self-taught artist, best-selling author, and educator based in Luxembourg. She paints beautiful florals and landscapes inspired by the nature and wilderness around her. Over the past 4 years, she has taught thousands of students and helped them grow their creative skills with confidence. In her bestselling book Wildflower Watercolor, Sushma simplifies and demystifies the process of painting to encourage more people to find joy in creating. Apart from sharing process videos, and glimpses of her studio life, she also regularly shares painting tips and tricks, fun experiments from her studio, and photos from her nature walks and travels.
www.sushmahegde.com https://www.instagram.com/sushhegde/?hl=en
Mike Hendley is a passionate artist, art teacher, podcaster, and writer who is deeply inspired by the beauty and complexity of nature. A self-taught artist, Mike captures the intricate patterns and forms found in nature, with a special affinity for animals both large and very small. His mediums range from graphite and watercolor to ink, colored pencil, and acrylic, and he's also ventured into digital art. His work transcends the canvas, serving as a poignant reminder of the urgency to protect and conserve our ecosystems. As a teacher, Mike shares his knowledge with enthusiasm, developing courses on drawing, painting and nature illustration. He's also the host of the Drawing Inspiration podcast and serves as an Artist Brand Ambassador for Pentel Canada. His ultimate goal is to inspire others to appreciate our planet's beauty and diversity and to take action for its preservation.
https://Mikehendley.com https://DrawingInspiration.fm
https://www.instagram.com/mike_hendley/?hl=en
Ben Goulet-Scott (L) and Jacob Suissa (aka Let’s Botanize) earned their PhDs at Harvard University in the department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology. Ben studied the genetic and ecological drivers of evolution in the wildflower genus Phlox. Ben is currently the Higher Education & Laboratory Coordinator at Harvard Forest. Jacob is a classically trained botanist and studies how plants construct their bodies, how they function, and how they have evolved across deep time. His primary research focuses on ferns. Jacob is currently an NSF postdoctoral fellow at Cornell University and will start as an Assistant Professor at University of Tennessee, Knoxville, in 2024. Together, Jacob and Ben run Let’s Botanize, an educational non-profit using plant life to teach about ecology, evolution, and biodiversity. Their goal is to democratize the study of plant biology by creating accessible and entertaining content, without compromising scientific rigor.
www.letsbotanize.org https://www.instagram.com/letsbotanize/?hl=en
Rosalie Haizlett is a nature illustrator from West Virginia. Her mission is to notice and creatively celebrate the often overlooked wonders of the natural world through vibrant watercolor paintings featuring the flora, fauna, and fungi that she finds on her walks in the woods. Rosalie is the author of Watercolor in Nature: Paint Woodland Wildlife & Botanicals in 20 Beginner-Friendly Projects (Page Street Publishing, 2021) and is the former Artist-in-Residence at Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the National Audubon Society, and the Roger Tory Peterson Institute of Natural History. She was recently awarded the 2022 Eckelberry Fellowship for distinguished wildlife illustrators from the Drexel Academy of Natural Sciences. Her forthcoming book (Mountaineers Books, 2024) will feature more than 150 watercolor illustrations and written descriptions of the tiny creatures and plants that she encountered on a 6-month trip through the Appalachian Mountains.
Roseann Hanson is one of the organizers of the Wild Wonder Nature Journaling Conference and co-founder of the Wild Wonder Foundation. She has taught more than 150 online and in-person nature journaling, writing, and field arts classes. Her books Nature Journaling for a Wild Life and Master of Field Arts debuted during COVID and have become popular for their format as eight-week “workshops in a book.” She is a professional naturalist, author, and expedition leader who has been keeping science-based nature and field notes journals for 40 years. She studied journalism and ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona, and has worked in the American Southwest, Mexico, and East Africa as a conservationist, naturalist, and writer. Roseann enjoys integrating conservation, science, outdoor skills, and cultural awareness into her work. She was named a Fellow of both the Explorers Club in the U.S. and the Royal Geographical Society for her conservation and expedition work.
http://www.exploringoverland.com/fieldarts https://www.facebook.com/roseannhansonexplore
https://www.instagram.com/roseannhanson
Ishita Jain is an illustrator and reportage artist based in NYC though she is originally from Delhi, India. She rarely leaves the house without a sketchbook and draws the people, places, and stories that surround her. Her work is inspired by day-to-day moments, giant trees, shimmering spots of light, and the wonder that comes from being around nature. She works across media, both digital and traditional, and her dream work scenarios involve drawing and meeting new people and places, preferably far away from her computer. She is the author and illustrator of Searching for Sunshine: In Conversation with Plants, Parks and The People Who Love Them, and she teaches at School of Visual Arts, NY. Ishita studied graphic design at the National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad, India and went to the MFA Illustration as Visual Essay Program at School of Visual Arts (SVA), New York.
Debby Kaspari grew up drawing, painting, and sketching from nature in the San Francisco Bay Area and is a graduate of California College of the Arts. Her paintings and sketches have been shown in the Woodson Museum’s Birds in Art exhibition and the Museum of American Bird Art, and featured in publications such as Bird Watcher's Digest and Birds of Trinidad and Tobago (Cornell Press). Kaspari has taught field sketching workshops in Oklahoma, California, Massachusetts, and Costa Rica. Her classes highlight developing drawing and observational skills, along with loosening up for extra speed when sketching wildlife on the move. Field sketching is an essential part of her practice and has led to adventures in remote natural places, and she will also very happily sketch neighborhood birds from the comfort of her porch swing. She lives in Oklahoma, had pet chickens in her youth, and gives them much of the credit for sending her in the birding and bird sketching direction.
Drawingthemotmot.com https://www.instagram.com/debbykaspari/?hl=en
Working from her studio in Northern California's Santa Cruz Mountains, Maryjo Koch is an accomplished naturalist painter. Largely self-taught, Maryjo began her career doing renderings as an environmental designer, but soon returned to her childhood fascination with the world of nature. Her work combines authority and enchantment, and her paintings and private commissions are featured in galleries and museums from North America to Asia. She has illustrated 22 books, including Pond Lake River Sea and Dragonfly Beetle Butterfly Bee, which received the Scientific American Book Award. Maryjo has taught nature painting at both the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco and at Monterey's renowned Monterey Bay Aquarium. She now conducts workshops online and her studio in the Santa Cruz Mountains in California.
Kristin Link is a fine artist, science illustrator, and educator based in Alaska. Nature journaling has been integral to Kristin’s work as a way to slow down and be present, to learn about the natural world around her, to develop visual vocabulary, and to explore details and patterns that she would otherwise overlook. Kristin contributes a weekly nature journal column to her local newspaper and has been teaching field sketching to students of all ages since 2010. She has worked with clients including the National Park Service, the University of Alaska, Woodwell Climate Research Center, and The Copper River Watershed Project, and her sketchbooks have been exhibited at the Alaska State Museum and featured in the New York Times travel section. Kristin lives in an off-the-grid cabin on Ahtna Athabaskan land, near McCarthy, AK in the middle of the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park, where she finds much of the inspiration for her work.
Artist and educator Jean Mackay has been exploring and sketching nature for more than 25 years. Working in all kinds of settings, from tide pools to farm fields to her own backyard in Upstate New York, Jean’s journals reflect a keen eye for detail and profound sense of wonder. She is the author/illustrator of The Nature Explorer’s Sketchbook (2020). Jean teaches online and in-person classes and offers immersive workshops through Winslow Arts Center in Bainbridge, Washington and the Hog Island Audubon Camp in Maine. Discover the ordinary, yet extraordinary things that she encounters close to home and farther afield on her blog, DrawnIn.
www.jeanmackayart.com https://www.instagram.com/jeanmackayart/
Yvea Moore is a coordinator and educator within the nature journaling community, as well as a long-term habitat restoration volunteer in her home city of San Francisco, CA. You can find her co-hosting John Muir Laws' weekly Zoom classes and educators forum, leading the online social gathering "Pencil Miles & Chill,” teaching plant classes, editing videos, and doing other behind-the-scenes work. Yvea is also a leader in combining nature journaling with stewardship work—she uses nature journaling as a powerful tool to document her field work (including habitat restoration and trash pickups) and to inspire others to take action.
https://www.youtube.com/@MadBotanist415/videos https://www.instagram.com/yveaeaton/
John Muir Laws (aka Jack) is a principal leader and innovator of the worldwide nature journaling movement. As a scientist, educator, artist, and author, Jack helps people forge a deeper and more personal connection with nature through keeping illustrated nature journals and understanding science. Jack has kept nature journals since he was a child. As a dyslexic, Jack struggled in school. He found his place and delight in learning through spending time in nature and keeping notebooks of his observations, discoveries, and adventures. Trained as a wildlife biologist and scientific illustrator, he now observes the world with rigorous attention and awe. He looks for mysteries, plays with ideas, and seeks connection in all he sees. He has found that attention, observation, curiosity, and creative thinking are not gifts, but instead are skills that grow with training and deliberate practice. Jack loves to share ways to make these skills a part of everyday life. He is the author and illustrator of several books including The Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling (also available in Spanish), The Laws Sketchbook, The Laws Guide to Drawing Birds, Sierra Birds: a Hiker’s Guide, Sierra Wildflowers: A Hiker’s Guide, and The Laws Guide to the Sierra Nevada. He is co-author with Emilie Lygren of How to Teach Nature Journaling. More info. https://www.instagram.com/johnmuirlaws/
Akshay Mahajan and Gargi Chugh, San Francisco residents, are nature-journaling-couple-goals! They spent the entirety of their first date in 2016 talking about their love for art projects, dancing, and nature, and when they discovered nature journaling in 2018, there was no turning back! Akshay, a hardware engineer and a serious bug-lover, uses cartoons, text, and diagrams to unravel and simplify the mysteries of the natural world. Gargi, a data scientist, uses questions and hypotheses as her superpower to explore the interactions in nature. Their nature journaling accomplishments include raising 4 pet mantises during the pandemic, getting their friends and family to yell "aww cute!" on seeing a spider, and mandating dance-greetings in their local nature journaling community (being silly and having fun are the only rules).
https://www.instagram.com/inkuisitive.being/?hl=en
https://www.instagram.com/nature.doodles.by.inkventor/?hl=en
Rosemary Mosco is an enthusiastic cartoonist and nature writer who is easily distracted by insects and birds. She makes books, articles, and comics (Bird and Moon) that connect people with the natural world. She's written and drawn for The New York Times, Audubon, PBS kids' Elinor Wonders Why, Ranger Rick, and more. Her Bird and Moon nature comics won the National Cartoonists Society's award for Best Online Short Form Comic. Her books include A Pocket Guide to Pigeon Watching, Butterflies Are Pretty... Gross!, Birding Is My Favorite Video Game, Expedition Backyard, and many more. Her favorite glacial landform is the esker.
rosemarymosco.com https://z-p42.www.instagram.com/rosemarymosco/
Kate Righter’s work as an artist and educator is rooted in the belief that creativity can help people of all ages deepen their connection to the natural world. Her love for the land, the ocean, and Hawaiian culture inspires both her colorful paintings as well as her art-based activism – creating images speaking to urgent environmental concerns. Kate is part of a global community of nature journaling educators who integrate place-based learning with both scientific and artistic ways of thinking and seeing. She works with families, schools, and nonprofit organizations to teach these lessons both inside and outside of traditional classrooms. From farms to parks, schoolyards, and backyards, she shares the importance of observing and documenting the world around us.
https://katerighter.com/ https://www.instagram.com/katerighter/
Kate Rutter is an avid nature journaler, urban naturalist, educator, and native plant enthusiast who enlivens nature-human connection through sketching, observation, and curiosity. A lifelong sketcher with an experimental and rambunctious visual practice, Kate’s education work spans online teaching; corporate and nonprofit workshops; conferences and events; nature journal workshops at public gardens, private gardens, and nurseries; and serving as adjunct professor at the California College of the Arts. Kate holds a B.A. in Studio Art from Wellesley College.
A lifelong advocate for wildlife, Beth Pratt has worked in environmental leadership roles for more than 30 years, and in two of the country’s largest national parks: Yosemite and Yellowstone. As the California Regional Executive Director for the National Wildlife Federation, Pratt leads the #SaveLACougars campaign to build the Wallis Annenberg Wildlife Crossing, which broke ground on Earth Day in 2022. The largest wildlife crossing of its kind in the world, it will help save a population of mountain lions from extinction. Her innovative conservation work has been featured in numerous national media outlets including The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, BBC World Service, CNN, NPR, and more. Her books include I Heart Wildlife: A Guided Activity Journal for Connecting With the Wild World (2020) When Mountain Lions are Neighbors: People and Wildlife Working It Out In California (2016), and the forthcoming Yosemite Wildlife (2024). She is featured in the documentary “The Cat that Changed America,” and she gave a TEDx talk, “How a Lonely Cougar in Los Angeles Inspired the World.” Beth makes her home outside of Yosemite, her "North Star,” with her six dogs, two cats, and the mountain lions, bears, foxes, frogs, and other wildlife that frequent her backyard.
https://www.bethpratt.com https://www.101wildlifecrossing.org
Marley Peifer has nature journaled in Baja, the Amazon, the Serengeti, the Galapagos, and the rainforests of Costa Rica, Panama, and Ecuador among other places. Marley believes that nature journaling has an important role to play in helping illuminate and protect the world's vanishing biodiversity, and he has dedicated his life to spreading the practice of nature journaling and using it in more applied ways. In pursuit of this vision, Marley has produced more than 300 nature journaling videos on his YouTube channel, and he has taught nature journaling for almost a decade in English and Spanish.
Isaiah Emmanuel Scott, born and raised in Savannah, Georgia, is an avid birder, natural history illustrator, outdoor brand ambassador, and social media influencer. He is a third-year student attending Cornell University, majoring in environment and sustainability, with a focus on ornithology and science communication. He leads bird watching hikes known as Ike’s Birding Hikes, an Avitourism brand with a goal of connecting people with nature and creating bird watching opportunities for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. He received the 2021 Eckleberry Fellowship, which endows nature artists with the goal of enhancing the impact of their work. His plan is to illustrate and create a book that depicts the relationship of birds and African culture in continental Africa, as well as the diaspora.
https://www.instagram.com/ikesbirdinghikes/ https://www.instagram.com/theisaiahescott/
Douglas Tallamy is the T. A. Baker Professor of Agriculture in the Department of Entomology and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Delaware, where he has authored more than 100 research publications and has taught insect related courses for 42 years. Chief among his research goals is to better understand the many ways insects interact with plants and how such interactions determine the diversity of animal communities. His books include Bringing Nature Home, The Living Landscape, co-authored with Rick Darke, Nature's Best Hope: A New Approach to Conservation That Starts in Your Yard, a New York Times bestseller, and The Nature of Oaks, winner of the American Horticultural Society’s 2022 book award. In 2021 he cofounded Homegrown National Park with Michelle Alfandari (HomegrownNationalPark.org). His awards include recognition from The Garden Writers Association, Audubon, The National Wildlife Federation, Allegheny College, Ecoforesters, The Garden Club of America, and The American Horticultural Association.
Amy Tan is a bestselling novelist, essayist, and nature journalist. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2023 she received the National Humanities Medal. She has been a member of the Nature Journal Club since 2016 and also has taken workshops with author, artist, and educator John Muir Laws, which led to her passion for nature journaling. She wrote the introduction to How to Teach Nature Journaling by John Muir Laws and Emilie Lygren. She is the subject of the documentary, “Amy Tan: Unintended Memoir,” part of which was filmed at the first-ever Wild Wonder Nature Journaling Conference at Asilomar in Monterey in 2019, where Amy sketched with fellow nature journalist Fiona Gillogly and John Muir Laws. As part of her informal nature studies, Amy has served as a go-fer in field research with biologists, including one expedition that documented the existence of a single ant colony on Easter Island, and another study on the social system of a community of female rattlesnakes in Colorado that gather to protect their young. She is an instructor with Masterclass, in which she discusses in part how observing nature is similar to developing characters. Her passion for birds led her to joining the board of American Bird Conservancy, which is dedicated to conserving wild birds and their habitats throughout the Americas. Amy recently appeared in a New York Times online event with Christian Cooper on “The Joy of Birding,” and in 2022, she was the host of “Selected Shorts: Bird Stories,” held at Symphony Space in New York City and also livestreamed. Many of her observations and drawings of birds over the last 7 years first appeared as posts in the Nature Journal Club Facebook page and have been collected in her forthcoming book, The Backyard Bird Chronicles (Knopf, April 2024), with a forward written by David Sibley. She is grateful to the Nature Journal Club and Wild Wonder Foundation for inspiration, resources, and encouragement.
http://www.amytan.net/ https://www.instagram.com/amytanwriter/
Florence Williams is a journalist, author, and podcaster. Her first book, BREASTS: A Natural and Unnatural History received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in science and technology and the 2013 Audie in general nonfiction. Her book, The Nature Fix: Why Nature Makes Us Happier, Healthier, and More Creative, was an Audible bestseller and was named a top summer read by J.P Morgan. Her latest book, Heartbreak, was called “show-stopping” and “courageous” by Publisher’s Weekly. She is a contributing editor at Outside Magazine and a freelance writer for the New York Times and numerous other publications. A fellow at the Center for Humans and Nature and a visiting scholar at George Washington University, Florence focuses on the environment, health and science. A certified forest-bathing guide and experienced workshop leader, Florence loves leading groups through nature-immersive experiences and watching the transformation, connection, and healing that results.
www.florencewilliams.com https://www.instagram.com/florence999/