Helen Byers is an award-winning artist and educator who was born in Brazil and grew up in the California Bay Area and Mexico. She earned graduate degrees in English at UC Santa Barbara and later lived on the Olympic Peninsula (WA) and near Boston. She now lives in northern New Mexico.

Helen’s background includes book illustration; art journalism; college-level teaching of fine art, literature, and writing; and a career as an educational author and editor. Since 2012 she has focused on botanical and natural science illustration.

She has taught at Ghost Ranch Education and Retreat Center (NM) since 2005. She has also taught many courses at Tower Hill Botanic Garden (MA), Concord Center for the Visual Arts (MA), Fruitlands Museums (MA), Tin Mountain Conservation Center (NH), and most recently, Santa Fe Botanical Garden. 

Helen’s botanical art has shown with the international juried exhibitions of Filoli and the American Society of Botanical Artists & the Horticultural Society of New York. She has exhibited with the American Society of Botanical Artists in St. Louis, San Francisco, and Miami, and with the New England Society of Botanical Artists at the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University.