Claire Emery | artist, naturalist, educator

Claire Emery, born 1970 in Baltimore, Maryland, is an American artist, naturalist and educator who has lived and worked in Missoula, Montana since 1992.

Emery began her career in the mountains with a field journal and pen in hand. Her love for sketching and keen observation of the natural landscape evolved into a freelance business illustrating books, posters, interpretive signs and publications. Today Emery’s artistic efforts focus on her passion for transforming her field sketches of Montana’s natural world into hand-carved woodblock prints.   Her botanical and scientific illustrations and watercolor woodcut prints have been exhibited in juried shows and purchased for private and public collections nationwide and are currently  exhibited at the Optical Museum of ZEISS in Oberkochen, Germany.

Emery also leads place-based workshops across the country for students ages 3 – 93 on field journaling, nature drawing and printmaking. Every course engages students in creativity and conservation and community mindfulness.

Rather than seeing art and activism as two exclusive spheres of practice, Emery sees art as a springboard to understanding and action in community. She engages diverse strategies — collaboration, research, teaching, field work, field sketching, scientific illustration, installation, woodcuts, printmaking and mindfulness — in a practice that aims to engage the human imagination and community in personal and environmental change.

Emery holds an M.S. in Environmental Studies with an emphasis in place-based education and art from the University of Montana, a Graduate Certificate in Natural Science Illustration from UC Santa Cruz, and an MFA in Visual Art from Vermont College of Fine Art.