Ellery next to her artwork at an exhibition at the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art.
My greatest pleasure as an artist is to become what I’m looking at: to throw my consciousness into a tree, a stream, or a leaf, and feel my way into its life from the inside out.
I often use unconventional tools, rather than a brush—sticks, twigs, string and copper wire—all of which give me access to energy and emotion. Many of my drawings are created by using a stick dipped in ink: the ink is wiped away many times and re-drawn to build up texture and incised lines, as in a print.
Bio
The work of award-winning artist Ellery Akers has been featured in solo and group exhibitions in museums, galleries, and art centers, including the Anchorage Museum of History and Art in Alaska; the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art in Novato, California; the Whatcom Museum in Bellingham, Washington; the Coos Art Museum in Coos Bay, Oregon; and the San Diego Museum of Art. She is the recipient of the Watson Cross, Jr. Award from the National Watercolor Society.
Akers is also an award-winning writer and author of Practicing the Truth, which won an Independent Publisher Book Award; Knocking on the Earth; and Swerve: Environmentalism, Feminism, and Resistance, which won awards from BookAuthority for Best Environmentalism Books of All Time and Best Poetry Books of All Time. She received an M.A. from San Francisco State University and a B.A. from Harvard University.