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 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 A Door into the Wild: Poetry and Art, which won the 2024 Blue Light Book Award; Swerve: Environmentalism, Feminism, and Resistance, which won BookAuthority’s Award for Best Environmentalism Books of All Time; and Practicing the Truth, which won an Independent Publisher Book Award. She received an M.A. from San Francisco State University and a B.A. from Harvard.