Elizabeth Buckley

Elizabeth J. Buckley’s approach to the art of hand woven tapestry involves working in multiple layers and dimensions to create visual poems of blended colors and light. She designs and weaves her large and small format tapestries with weft bundle blends of crewel weight wools, perlé cotton, and silk into imagery that often incorporates illusions of transparency, three-dimensional forms, and tromp l’oeil effects. She utilizes many techniques found in French Gothic and Renaissance tapestries, mindfully creating contemporary heirlooms for generations to come. Elizabeth Buckley draws inspiration from her observations of the natural world, what is both seen and invisible. Her work articulates the textures of earth memory and the undercurrent of time in terms of millennia; time of the forces which molded earth’s canyons and mesas, oceans and mountains; time filled with the spirits of those who have come before.

Early in the past five decades of her career, Elizabeth Buckley’s hand woven tapestries evolved from using techniques of the Southwest traditions to those of French tapestry; from weaving with no pre-planned design to using a cartoon. She further honed her skills in Aubusson, France. With her degree in art, Elizabeth brings to the classroom--in person and online--her deep grounding in design principles and color theory that specifically apply to hand woven tapestry. Elizabeth Buckley’s award-winning tapestries have a lengthy exhibition history, including national juried and invitational shows, as well as in museum exhibitions. Her work is in numerous private collections, and was featured in the Fiber Art Now article on “An Artist’s Sense of Place,” Fall 2017 issue. Her publications include: Carol K. Russell’s The Tapestry Handbook: The Next Generation, and Contemporary International Tapestry. Recently, her work has been included in: Micala Sidore’s Tapestry Talking and The Art is the Cloth, Rebecca Mezoff’s The Art of Tapestry, and Tommye Scanlin’s Tapestry Design Basics and Beyond. In 2011, Elizabeth was awarded the American Tapestry Alliance (ATA) Award for Excellence in Tapestry. In 2023, she won the ATA Second Place Teitelbaum Award for “The Veils of Time.”

2-D, Fiber Arts