Ecofeminist art emerged in the 1970s in response to ecofeminist philosophy, particularly that articulated by writers such as Carolyn Merchant, Val Plumwood, Donna Haraway, Starhawk, Greta Gaard, Karen Warren and Rebecca Solnit. Those writers emphasized the significance of relationships of cultural dominance and ethics (Merchant, Plumwood, Donna Haraway) expressed as sexism (Haraway), spirituality (Starhawk), speciesism (Warren, Gaard), capitalist values that privilege objectification and the importance of vegetarianism in these contexts (Gaard).
The relevance of these ecofeminist art was discussed in feminist art programs at the college and university level, including at the Institute for Social Ecology at Goddard College, Vermont.
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The work of ecofeminist artists in response to those ideas, helped inspire many early male and female practitioners in the ecological art movement to imitate their concerns about a more horizontal relationship to environmental functions in their own practices. The feminist art writer Lucy Lippard, writing for the Weather Report Show she curated, which included many ecological artists and some ecofeminist artists from the list below (2007 Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art), commented how many of those artists were women.
Authors who have written about ecofeminist artists most prominently, include Gloria Feman Orenstein.
The Women's Environmental Art Directory (WEAD) is a compendium of women self-identified as environmental artists, initiated by Jo Hanson and Susan Leibovitz Steinman in the 1990s to credit women artists who might not otherwise be recognized in the mainstream canon. In addition to artists, some curators were influenced by this thinking, such as Amy Lipton, co-curator of ecoartspace with Tricia Watts. Lipton initiated two relevant shows in her Soho gallery, Shapeshifters (1992) which included 22 women artists to commemorate the women who were tried and killed for witchcraft in Salem. and The Abortion Project, a pro-choice art exhibition.