About Bobbi Angell

I started drawing plants…

in my first botany class in college; have been drawing them ever since. I work for scientists at The New York Botanical Garden and other institutions, using herbarium specimens to illustrate floras, monographs and new species. My pen and ink line drawings have depicted several thousand species from areas as diverse as the deserts of the Intermountain West to the tropical forests of Central French Guiana and Greater Antilles. Other projects included lichens of Ohio and the Great Smokies and field guides to the wildflowers of Pine Barrens in NJ and the Jura mountains of Switzerland. Field work has increased my knowledge of plants and continues to fuel my enthusiasm for drawing them.

While drawing plants for botanists, it was inevitable that I would develop a great interest in growing them. I am as much a gardener as an illustrator, cultivating unusual plants in my garden that I want to draw, and drawing interesting plants as I watch them grow throughout their life cycles. My skills and knowledge have yielded wonderful opportunities to illustrate plants for horticulturally minded projects, including New York Times Garden Q & A, John Scheepers Kitchen Garden Seeds catalog, the memoir Our Life in Gardens, and a useful dictionary, in A Botanist’s Vocabulary, co-authored with Dr. Susan Pell in 2016.  And now I have done Darwin and The Art of Botany with my coauthor James Costa.

My gardening and illustration work has led to encounters with uncommon and visually appealing plants that I translate into a very specialized art form - copper etchings. I create and handprint limited edition prints of subjects ranging from tiny alpine wildflowers to cultivated Asian woody plants. 

Well recognized for my art and illustration work, I have won awards, most notably Jill Smythies Award from the Linnaean Society of London and Award for Excellence in the Service of Botanical Art from American Society of Botanical Artists. I enjoy offering public lectures about botanical art and I teach occasional workshops. I am an active member of ASBA, editing and writing for the journal and serving as Institutional Member Liaison and am member of Society of Botanical Art. 

instagram.com bobbiangellbotanical

Commissions, licensing of existing art, and sales of copper etchings are all welcome.