Heather Lara was born and raised in New England where she developed an appreciation for nature at an early age.  She has lived many places since her childhood but now happily resides in Temecula, California with her husband, two small daughters and too many critters to mention them all.

A volunteer job with the Animal Department at the Living Desert in Palm Desert introduced her to a career as a serious artist when she was hired by the Graphics Department full time.  She further expanded her resume by working freelance for the American Wilderness Experience, helping them open their zoo from the ground up by creating many of the exhibit graphics.  A move to Argentina separated her from the zoos but it was here that she spent two years honing her craft and had her first  solo exhibition at the Centro Cultural Fisherton.

Though she has never received formal artistic training at a university,  the Scientific Illustration classes she attended at the University of California at Santa Cruz helped her develop the techniques she now employs and her Biology Degree has given her the necessary knowledge of form and structure to create the extremely lifelike depictions of her subjects.

Her painstaking attention to detail has created a portfolio  rich in the diversity of life, from  landscapes and portraits in pastel and watercolor to meticulous wildlife scenes in scratchboard and colored pencil.  Her belief is that all of nature has beauty, even the smallest insect, and she hopes to share this with others through her art.