Alexis Averbuck was born in Oakland, California in 1972.  From an early age she traveled widely, living in Europe, Hong Kong, India, and Sri Lanka.  Averbuck attended Harvard University from 1990 to 1994, receiving a B.A. cum laude in African American Studies.  Early in her career, Averbuck concentrated exclusively on travel writing – publishing books on Mexico, Central America, and Rome.  Repeated journeys to Southeast Asia prompted her work on her book about Thailand, Singapore, and Tokyo. 

In 1995, Averbuck’s focus changed during a seminal year spent at McMurdo Station, Antarctica.  Inspired by the magnificent natural environment, and the unique solitude, Averbuck embarked on a quest to fulfill her creative impulses in a visual medium.  Leaving 'the Ice', Averbuck began a multi-year process of apprenticing with other artists to learn a variety of visual forms.  She started work with aquarelle in India, and moved on to incorporate watercolor in Amsterdam and New York.  Settling in New Orleans in 1997, she worked at the glass blowing and casting Studio Inferno, and then as a printmaker in the atelier of Frances Swigart-Steg. 

In 1999, this process culminated in an apprenticeship with the painter Judy Tuwaletstiwa on the Hopi Reservation in Arizona.  Averbuck found that painting with mixed media and acrylic combined the immediacy of watercolor, with the textures of glass and intaglio print.   During this time Averbuck showed her work at the Jonathan Ferrara Gallery and the Green Room in New Orleans and sold to private collectors.

In 2005, a trans-Pacific Ocean crossing by sailboat to the Marquesas Islands catalyzed her desire to work on color-infused skyscapes, which were the basis for her Pacific series. 

Averbuck relocated to Hydra, Greece in 2007.  Always inspired by landscape, she changed from painting with acrylics to painting with oils in order to capture the specific luster of the island's colors, moods, and natural environment.

Currently an author for Lonely Planet Publications, she remains in Hydra year round, living the changes in weather, seasons, water, and community on the island she now calls home.

The water, sky, land, and life of Hydra drove the creation of the paintings in her solo exhibition at the Melina Merkouri Gallery in May 2009.