b. 1984, Manchester, UK
Elizabeth Waggett is a visual artist based in the USA and working between the USA and Europe. Her practice investigates how meaning is constructed through time, labour, and material transformation, creating layered paintings and installations that combine oil paint, precious metals, antique textiles, and light. Drawing on the visual language of European still life, her work places subjects under conditions of restraint, where sustained attention becomes central to how meaning unfolds.
Waggett's Light Paintings, layered compositions, often incorporating gold, silver, copper, and zinc alloys, examine the tension between permanence and change. Built through repeated interventions in the studio, the works continue to evolve through oxidation, abrasion, chemical reaction, and the movement of light, allowing transformation to unfold materially over time. Their surfaces carry embedded histories: antique lace, oxidized metals, and found textiles hold traces of use, labour, and place, particularly the industrial textile heritage of her native Manchester. These materials carry the memory of touch, labour, and use, revealing the often unseen work behind what is perceived as beauty or refinement.
Across her practice, still life, figuration, abstraction, and installation function as parallel modes of inquiry, each emphasizing restraint, containment, and material discipline. Constructed through dozens of layers and repeated physical interventions, the works make time and labour materially visible. Individual paintings frequently expand into grouped works and architectural installations that activate space through scale, proximity, and light, encouraging slow looking rather than immediate resolution.
Waggett studied Fashion and Design at the University of Manchester and later Contemporary Art at the Royal College of Art. She has exhibited internationally in cities including New York, London, Paris, Hong Kong, and Los Angeles, and has collaborated with institutions and organizations including The King's Trust, the UN's Lion's Share Fund, Saks, Soho House and Netflix. Her work is held in private and public collections worldwide. She is developing immersive installations that extend her investigation of light, material, and architectural space.