Ezra Li Eismont was born in 1974 in the black mountains of North Carolina and spent his formative years growing up in the dense asphalt maze known as Brooklyn, New York. The spawn of an artistic environment, his mother was a painter and poet, his stepfather a painter, his father a potter and designer, his stepmother a designer and watercolorist, and his grandfather was the writer and circus performer Bill Ballantine.

Eismont moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1990 to earn a BFA in Painting at the California College of Arts and Crafts, and has lived there since. His art has been shown extensively in galleries and published in magazines. He also works as a scenic and billboard painter.