BIO
Henry Anker is a Brooklyn-based artist who works in painting, drawing, printmaking, and collage. He grew up in Northern California where the region’s natural landscape and radical politics shaped his sense of the world. He received his B.A. in Visual Arts from UCLA and his M.F.A. from Columbia. He currently teaches drawing and painting at The School of Visual Arts and Columbia.
His work centers on the dynamic interplay between symbolism and abstraction— rocks and trees, children and chimeras, fragments of text and gestural marks dissolve and coalesce into psychic landscapes. He draws from a history of visionary artists like William Blake, Marsden Hartley, Sigmar Polke, and Pierre Alechinsky, and is influenced by Bill McKibben’s concept of “the end of nature” and Walter Benjamin’s “allegorical cult of the ruin”. He balances his historical approach to art-making with constant formal experimentation, incorporating automatic drawing, cut-piece writing, gestural abstraction, photography, and printmaking into alchemical images of discovery and loss.
CV
Born in 1995 in Fayetteville, Arkansas
Resides and works in Brooklyn, New York
Selected Group Exhibitions
2025, Departures, 81 Leonard Gallery, New York, NY
2021, Columbia University M.F.A. Thesis Exhibition, The Wallach Gallery, New York, NY
2020, Minorly Magical, K and P Gallery, New York, NY
2020, Drawing Drive, The Stairs of Helmel, Los Angeles, CA
2020, Columbia University Summer Exhibition, Curated by Edsel Williams, NY
2020, Alone Together, Steve Turner Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
2019, Whams of Summer, Ki Smith Gallery, NY
2019, Aesthetically Functional Only, 1675 Broadway, NY
2019, Columbia University First Year M.F.A. Exhibition, The Wallach Gallery, NY
Teaching Experience:
2022-2023, Adjunct Professor, Beginning Painting, Columbia University, NY
2022- present, Adjunct Instructor, Painting 1, Painting 2, Drawing 1, Drawing 2, Senior Review Critic, School of Visual Arts, NY