About fauna.is About the artist Jón B. Hlíðberg was born in Reykjavík in 1957. He grew up in close contact with varied nature around his home as well as on the east-coast of Iceland where he spent some summers as a child. As could be expected he started showing interest in nature very early, especially birds, this coincided with a fascination of drawing, which eventually led him to courses in drawing at the Reykjavík school of arts in the winter of 1982-83. From there he went to the Academy of fine Arts and Crafts in 1983-85. After leaving the academy he started working as an illustrator. With limited commissions to begin with he worked at the Icelandic Museum of Natural History in Reykjavík and the Nature Study Centre in Kópavogur. For the past few years he has been able to devote more of his time to his nature illustrations. Jón has also been employed as a teacher in the first year of the academy of fine arts and crafts. He has illustrated a number of books on Icelandic nature. A closer description of these is to be found on the page "publications". In addition Jón has drawn a large number of illustrations in various teaching material, for the Schoolbook Publishers of Iceland, posters of many kinds, etc. Jón held his first public exhibition in October of 1999.