Elizabeth Buccino graduated from Maryland Institute, College of Art in 1999 with a BFA in Sculptural Studies and Art Education. While in Baltimore, she volunteered with The Police Athletic League in their After School Outreach Program, interned with Baltimore Museum of Art’s education department, and worked as a studio assistant for a local sculptor. While pursuing her studio practice, she continued working with children in community outreach projects. After moving to Nantucket, Elizabeth became an AAN artists member in 2002, and later in 2014 began teaching children and developing the after school ceramics programming, as well as the mixed media and ceramics programming for the Nantucket New School’s “Studio to School.” program. In 2023, Elizabeth became the AAN’s Director of Education.

Color is inspiring. Whether it is a landscape, a flower, or a still life, I seek to explore and play with the relationships and combinations of color within the blueprint of the form. I gather imagery from places I love, whether Nantucket, Maine or Ireland, and seek to express a real sense of being in that space and the feeling it engenders within through the medium of paint, and usually oils. A particular flower or an object might serve as another exercise in playing with color and form. I prefer working on a smooth surface and find that wood or board gives a painting a body of its own. While I majored in Studio Art and English at Wesleyan, I had worked primarily in drawing and printmaking. The making of art and things has always been central for me, in my work as a teacher, and in the island school I co-founded, Nantucket Lighthouse School. Working with one's hands, figuring it out as you go and, like Rumpelstiltskin, making something from 'nothing' seem to be both a fundamental human task and a meaningful exercise for all. I find the process of focused seeing to be a meditative one at its best and a worthy challenge always.