Painter and printmaker John Ery Coleman was born in Hamburg, Germany on October 28, 1923. His father, Nathaniel Ragsdale Coleman, was an American tobacco merchant and broker and his mother, Frances Esders, was an English opera singer known for her performances at the celebrated Dresden Opers in the 1930s. Coleman and his brother Nathaniel were educated in England and the United States. In 1943 Coleman enlisted as a private in the US Army during World War II, training in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, beginnning in 1943. 

Following the war Coleman traveled to Mexico to study lithography and woodcut with Isidoro Ocampo in Mexico City, and then traveled overseas to study intaglio printmaking with Johnny Friedlaender in Paris. After returning to the Untied States he lived in New York for a time before relocating to California, living at various times in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles County. He finally settled in the city of Los Angeles in the 1960s and in 1972 he married the actress Jennifer Howard, herself a painter. They remained in Los Angeles where Coleman continued to work and exhibit until his death in 1993. 

Selected Solo Exhibitions:
1993: Sylvia White Gallery, Santa Monice, CA
1979: Art Space Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
1968: University of Tennessee
1966: University of South Carolina; University of Tennessee
1964: Zora Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
1960: Silvan Simone Gallery, Los Angeles, CA
1958: Wittenborn Gallery, New York, NY

Selected Group Exhibitions:
St. Andrew's Priory Invitational; St. Augustin Invitational; The Art Institute of Chicago; University of Tennessee - Drawings, Watercolors, Prints; The Drawing Society - Regional Invitational Exhibition; San Francisco Museum of Art; Associated American Aritsts; California Watercolor Society (member); American Graphic Arts Society; Otis Art Institute; University of California at Los Angeles; Long Beach State College; Universitty of Illinois; University of Oklahoma; Pratt Institute; Library of Congress (1943); Oakland Museum; California Society of Etchers (member); Los Angeles County Musum of Art; Print Council of America; Society of Washington Printmakers; Pasadena Museum of Art; Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts

Selected Private and Public Collections:
Pennell Collection, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; De Young Museum, San Francisco, CA; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; Long Beach County Museum of Art, CA; Art Institute of Chicago, IL; Dogwood Arts, Knoxville, TN; Brooklyn Museum, NY; Museum of Fine Arts, Caracas, Venezuela