Nathalie Wallace was born in Germany but grew up in the north East of France near Metz. She is a French expat now living in Edinburgh, Scotland for the past 25 years.

As a child, Nathalie spent many summers in her mum’s potager garden. There she had her own corner where she was allowed to plant and experiment. Successes involved growing many varieties of Fritillaria in heavy clay soil and failures featured many hours spent trying to create perfumes and keeping a snail farm. Much of her childhood was spent playing in the abundant local fields. This is where her attention was first drawn to the amazing array of fragile flora populating the meadows, she had a particular fascination for Salvia pratensis. 

At 17, she moved to Scotland to pursue university studies. During her time at university, she studied botany as part of her degree and for years walked around with pen and book recording findings in verges, fields, car parks, road sides etc. Specimens were pressed as part of a herbarium and formed part of her dissertation. This earned her the Nigel Wynn award for best dissertation project.

Later on, she attended her first botanical illustration (BI) evening classes with The Royal Botanical Garden Edinburgh (RBGE). Unfortunately, due to personal circumstances, she was unable to return to BI for a long time. 

She did however continue to paint and even took a paint box with her on honeymoon in Madagascar where she painted a Coral hibiscus. 

2019 proved a very difficult but pivotal year and, with the encouragement of a friend, Nathalie decided to focus fully on Botanical art. Before year end, she gained a Certificate in Botanical Illustration with distinction from RBGE. This was then followed by another distinction from the ‘fine details & finishing techniques’ course run by Jackie Isard, SBA Fellow.
Nathalie exhibited three paintings in October 2020 as part of the ‘Blooming lockdown’ exhibition run by the Scottish Society of Botanical Artists (SSBA) at the Frames Gallery in Perth and is currently exhibiting one painting virtually as part of the ‘purely botanical?‘ exhibition run by the Association of British Botanical Artists (ABBA). 

In November 2020, Nathalie was accepted to attend a diploma run by the Society of Botanical Art (SBA) for the next 27 months.
As an artist, Nathalie grows her own plants in her garden and has a fascination for the small details. She is very interested in depicting the fragility of plants.

Nathalie is a member of SSBA, SSA, ABBA and SBA.