Gary Akers

Akers is one of America's foremost contemporary realist, painting in watercolor, dry brush and egg tempera. Akers is considered to be a master of light and shadow in his exciting compositions.

His works are praised both for their beauty and for their richness of detail, and that level of detail is all the more remarkable considering the medium he works in.

The artist specializes in landscapes painted in egg tempera, an egg-based paint that must be painstakingly applied, with each work built up of hundreds of layers. No other medium can match the beautiful luminosity of the traditional Renaissance technique of egg tempera. By the mid-1980s, Akers' egg tempera works were fetching commissions of up to $50,000.

Akers is also pretty prolific: A coffee-table book "Kentucky: Land of Beauty," published in 1999, gathers together more than 100 of his paintings of Kentucky rural scenes and landmarks, from covered bridges to Churchill Downs. Akers second book "Memories of Maine" was published in 2003.