Flora and fauna artist Bing Famoso’s brush keeps Philippine nature alive

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The Philippine Botanical Art Society (PhilBAS) and Philippine Fauna Art Society (PhilFAS) celebrate their sixth anniversary this year, around the beginning of the -ber months. All the more, at this time, artist members organize a flurry of exhibits. That, on top of several collaborations with institutions, while making their mark in championing native wildlife conservation.

It wasn’t always like that. The art organizations’ journey wasn’t linear — mirroring that of their founder, Willa Freah Famoso Tac-an, or more simply, Bing Famoso.

Bing’s life has many interesting stories. One of them begins in a small room at the National Museum of Natural History, given to Famoso by the Botany and National Herbarium Division as her workshop. She had already founded the organizations and was assigned to illustrate a plant species for a scientific journal.

It wasn’t the first time for Bing. She had painted several flora species for exhibits before. She’d be an expert. Still, forester Dany Tandang, researcher at the museum, had something to say about her work. 

She was getting ahead of herself, Tandang told her. There was a curve on a leaf that didn’t go the right way. She already had a preconceived object in her head, that’s why, Tandang said.

“I was trained by Dr. Dany Tandang to keep your eye focused on the details, na ‘wag mong i-se-stray ‘yong eyes mo (to not let my eyes stray),” Bing said.

A little mistake, say, a slight difference in color, or a deviation in the pattern, will portray a different species entirely. 

“Feeling ko ‘di ako artist, ‘yong to the point na hindi artsy,” Bing said about her work. (I don’t feel like an artist, not in that artsy kind of way.)

At its core, botanical and fauna art is a scientist’s work. It requires careful observation and precision, contrary to the openness and freedom of the brush strokes in other art forms. But for Bing, like an eagle locking onto its mark, this is just another challenge she’s ready to take. 

Sprouting together

When Bing began PhilBAS and PhilFAS, she meant the organizations to be inclusive — no certain skill required to become a member. It’s a rarity in the art community, where groups tend to be elite. 

That’s why members range from nine-year-olds to housewives, lawyers, doctors, and teachers. Students and those with science backgrounds join too. The two societies have over 100 members combined as of this writing.

ON DISPLAY. Bing Famoso’s donated Philippine eagle painting is displayed on the second floor of the National Museum of Natural History. Photo by Laurice Angeles/Rappler

Botanical and fauna art wasn’t widely practiced before, not unless one was a botanist or a wildlife biologist — and even then, it was mostly for journal publications, not art exhibits.

“As artists, ‘di pa tayo talaga bihasa (we’re not really skilled yet). So we grow together as botanical artists,” Bing said.

This is exactly what she envisioned. At the beginning, she only wanted to join a local flora art group to learn about native species, but found none. As in most of her life stories, problems like that don’t stop her.

An eagle and its target

How the art organizations began is something Bing laughs about. 

In April 2018, she decided to go to the National Museum of Natural History — alone — to pitch her big idea of a flora artist organization in the Philippines. She didn’t know anyone at the museum. She was a 44-year-old housewife who never had an eight-to-five job before. 

She was nonetheless led to the right office by talking her way past the strict security. She convinced the security guard she knew some “doctor” from the botany division. Ah she’s talking about Dr. Edwin Tadiosa, the security guard said. And Bing replied, yes, that’s the one. 

Despite the surprise, she was accommodated by Tadiosa and John Rey Callado, both botanists and museum researchers. That was also when she first met Tandang. She wanted to revive the botanical art form, Bing told them. 

Among the last known records of Philippine botanical art is Flora de Filipinas, a 19th-century set of books by Augustinian botanist Manuel Blanco, to which 17 Filipinos contributed. The species’ names have long since changed, rendering the work obsolete.

Bing learned about that tidbit when she went down a rabbit hole into botanical art in the Philippines.

Her deep dive began in 2016 when she saw cherry blossoms planted in Benguet and heard plans for a local cherry blossom festival. Having lived in Korea for six years (her husband was based there), she knew the trees were native there, not in the Philippines. The thought saddened her — she wondered what native flowers the Philippines had that were as beautiful.

Her search revealed wonders like the tayabak or the jade vine, the suwiyasuy or the Benguet lily, and many more. “For the first time in my life, I saw these beautiful species,” she said.

After seeing that the Philippines had thousands of its own, Bing couldn’t take seeing the cherry blossoms celebrated in Benguet. “Nag-rebolusyon ‘yong aking puso (My heart was in revolt),” she said.

In 2017, she began painting Philippine endemic flowers for her exhibits, deviating from her favorite subject, the mother and child. “Hindi ako sikat na artist, or hindi rin ako marunong pa dahil kaka-start ko lang. But it made me inspired na mag-exhibit ako just so makita ng mga tao ‘yong mga endemic flora.”

(I’m not a well-known artist, and I was still new to this. But it inspired me to mount an exhibit so people could see the endemic flora.)

A friend to science

To Bing, Philippine wildlife conservation is a tall order. 

There are over 50,000 flora and fauna species in the Philippines, around half of which are endemic, according to the Philippine Clearing House Mechanism. The Biodiversity Management Bureau (BMB) of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) has listed as threatened at least 1,106 fauna species as of 2019 and 984 flora species as of 2017.

“How can botanists and environmentalists do that alone?” she asked. Then she realized she couldn’t either. “If by myself I paint these, baka patay na ‘ko, ‘di ko pa sila na-pe-paint lahat (I’d be dead before I finished them all). [That’s why I built the societies].”

Bing believes art can spark awareness. “If they will see a story on the canvas…it will appeal to their emotions, to their senses,” she said. Those emotions can inspire curiosity and action for conservation.

Botanist Fernando Aurige once gave his book on Philippine hoya species to Bing with a note, “Please continue on contributing to science your artworks.”

“I love her work,” wildlife biologist Leticia Afuang said during Bing’s solo exhibit in May 2025. “I respect everything that she is doing. And I will always support her.”

Bing worked hard to earn the trust of scientists.

In 2018, when Bing pitched her idea to the museum botanists, the organizations weren’t established right away. Great idea, the botanists told her, but come back another time. They were busy with museum renovations. And Bing kept coming back.

On September 4, 2019, they finally granted her wish — PhilBAS was established, with Tandang, Tadiosa, and Callado as her co-founders. Soon after, Bing founded PhilFAS to include wildlife.

An empty nest

Bing’s identity as an artist has always been intertwined with her roles as a housewife and a mother.

Right after graduating from university in 1995, she married and focused on family. In 2013, watching her eldest child leave for college gave her deep separation anxiety — yet it was also the year she discovered painting.

Seeing oil paintings in her daughter’s dorm room, she admitted, “Nainggit ako doon sa anak ko (I envied my daughter).” Her degree in Philippine arts at the University of the Philippines Manila, trained her in arts management — not to be an artist. So three years later, at 42, she began learning to paint with her daughter’s high school teacher as her tutor.

On the contrary, organizing events came naturally to her, thanks to her sorority training and university connections.

So everything was going well — until in 2022, when she found out she had lupus, an incurable autoimmune disease. Projects of the organizations were ongoing at the time, but Bing fell into depression and withdrew for two years.

Her co-founders were so supportive of her in 2019 that, they entrusted all operations to her alone. It did well at the beginning; projects were completed swiftly without the bureaucracy. But operations stopped when Bing disappeared. “Nawala na lang nang parang bula (It just vanished into thin air),” she said.

Bing thought it was her illness that brought her depression. But it was also her youngest child who left for the United States in 2020 to study. This left her and her husband alone at home, giving her debilitating separation anxiety. “‘Yon lang din ang [naging] buhay ko (That was the only life I knew),” she said about being a mother.

It was in 2024 when Bing came to terms with the big changes in her life. “I’m prepared for my death, I’m prepared for my future, for my funeral, for my wake,” she said. When it comes to her kids, she added, “Ngayon, kapag nag-pe-paint ako, ‘di ko sila naaalala (Now, when I paint, I forget about them for a while).”

Both art organizations were revived in 2024, and projects once again filled her days. Among those she’s proudest of is PhilBAS’ participation in Botanical Art Worldwide (BAW). Through this event, the public can view bright illustrations of the Philippines’ native flora species inside Gallery XII of the National Museum of Natural History. The exhibit was launched on August 29, 2025, and runs until May 18, 2026.

The organizations also have collaborations with the DENR-BMB, the Department of Education, the Department of Foreign Affairs, and other agencies that the public should watch out for. In November 2025, she’ll be in Oslo, Norway, for an exhibit with the Philippine embassy in Norway.

ON DISPLAY. A botanical illustration by Bing Famoso is displayed inside Gallery XII of the National Museum of Natural History. Photo by Laurice Angeles/Rappler

Bing, at 51, has a long list of goals she’s working on to achieve.

In some of her daydreams, she’s a teacher of a newly-established botanical art course at a university. In others, she’s donated a Philippine eagle painting to all Philippine embassies across the globe. In her wildest imaginations, she’s among the founders of an international fauna art society. 

Those are too big ambitions she doesn’t need in her life, her colleagues would tell her. “Magpahinga ka naman (Get some rest too),” they’d say. 

“No,” Bing said she’d respond in Filipino. “That way we’re just letting time slip away.” – Rappler.com