About the Artist

Before there was a studio full of hand-formed botanicals, there was a stage.

Christina Akerson's first serious creative training wasn't in painting — it was in classical voice. She earned two degrees in Voice from UCLA and the Manhattan School of Music on full scholarship, and spent her early adult life preparing for a career in opera. It was later in life when art called her back. The arrival of her three daughters reignited a desire to play wildly. She hadn’t felt that way since high school, a time when her own high school teacher — Ms. Branlin — saw something in Christina's work before Christina fully saw it herself, quietly entering her into local art competitions and scholarship programs. She won two first-place ribbons, earning enough to open her first bank account. It had been a monumental moment but it waited in the wings.

Now as a self taught artist, her vocal past clearly informs the work: cadence, repetition, breath, and memory enter the paintings through the physicality of building them.

Her technique is tactile, hands-on, and entirely her own — composing now, rather than performing someone else's score. She shapes acrylic into raised forms, then combines it with resin, nailheads, and hand-formed flora elements. Color moves and melts rather than holding a hard edge: one hue deepens, dissolves, or emerges through the layers. Hand-sculpted flora doesn't stay contained to its canvas; it drifts off the grid, extending past its own boundaries. That refusal to stay inside the lines is the DRIFT.

Since beginning her art journey she has received several 1st Place awards and  Best in Show placements. She has juried into some of the most prestigious international art fairs in Los Angeles, Miami, and New York. Her work is held in galleries in California, Florida, and Hawaii. She lives and works in Huntington Beach “Surf City” California, where everyone plays around.

Art is a life lived.