Dorie Petrochko is an accomplished painter and natural science illustrator who has taught art for twenty-five years. She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Wagner College in Staten Island, NY and a Master's Degree in Art Education from Southern CT State University in New Haven, CT.

In 2007, she completed Certification in Botanical and Natural Science Illustration from The New York Botanical Garden. Her interest in traveling and painting birds is a lifelong passion. She has volunteered at the Yale Peabody Museum Vertebrate Zoology Division, in Ornithology and Entomology for the past thirteen years, where she frequently uses their specimens as reference for her work.

Dorie is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Don Eckelberry Fellowship Award for Wildlife Painting and the Julia and David White Fellowship in Costa Rica. She exhibits her work in shows and galleries nationally:  The Bennington Gallery in Bennington, VT,  for the Art of the Animal Kingdom Exhibition and in 2014, the State Museum of Albany Exhibit: Focus on Nature. In 2015, she exhibited in All Things Birds and Beautiful, a juried show on Orcas Island, WA, to benefit bird conservation.

 Currently, Dorie lectures and teaches natural science illustration at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History in New Haven, CT, where she is president of Connecticut Natural Science Illustrators and serves as Membership Chairman of the New York Chapter of the Guild of Natural Science Illustrators.

I am a passionate and dedicated art teacher. I enjoy helping people develop new skills, while giving them the confidence to try new things. I have worked with older adults in many different settings and the best part about teaching them is their enthusiasm for learning. They enjoy each other's company and openly share ideas and generally have a good time. It is social as well as educational. I have a lot of experience teaching art and want to share this knowledge with an audience who is eager to learn.