Justin Ackerman is an American abstract painter, photographer and writer from Richmond, VA. In 2011 he graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University with a BA in English Literature.

When he was on the playground as a child, he realized that he saw spoken words float across his vision. With noises, he saw splashes of colors and textures that seemed to breathe and live in rooms in the mind. These tonal spaces would later become a large focus of his abstract paintings.

In 2012, Ackerman came across the works of the late nineteenth century Theosophist, Annie Besant and her Thought-Form drawings. They instantly grabbed him for their familiarity and likeness to his own visions. This discovery fueled a curiosity in his own perceptions and a better understanding of the neurological condition, Synesthesia.

Unlike Besant who believed her visions were a form of clairvoyance, Ackerman’s exploration of these experiences is to better understand human perception and how the subconscious mind creates our reality.