Visual Guide to Working in a Series

Elizabeth Barton

Elizabeth lives in Athens, Georgia. While a lake and mountains outside her windows would be wonderful, instead she enjoys many beautiful trees, which give endless seasonal variety. She grew up in York, England. There, she walked to school (one founded in the seventeenth century) along city walls built by the Romans around AD 71. Seeing every day the effects of time on buildings and landscape influenced her first quilts. Growing up in a dark northern city made light and windows extremely important. Many of her quilts are about light and the contrast between dark and light.

Elizabeth originally trained as a clinical psychologist and pursued this occupation for many years both in England and in the United States. Gradually, however, the idea of creating art from fabric grew ever more fascinating, and one year she just decided to let the license lapse and pursue art instead. While Athens, Georgia, has neither lakes nor mountains, it is an active art and music community, offering a lot of encouragement and support from the surface design professors at the university as well as opportunities for solo shows (of which she has had several). She began teaching at Arrowmont School for Arts and Crafts (Gatlinburg, Tennessee), then wrote lessons for online courses, and finally was persuaded to put everything into a book.

Please visit her at www.elizabethbarton.com and www.elizabethbarton.blogspot.com.