The unflinching eye of Elizabeth Layton

Aging, Fall, 1994 by Don Lambert, P. Jones

What a viewer sees in the drawings of Elizabeth Layton, besides the wrinkles and sagging flesh, is the unflinching honesty with which she drew the pains and joys of growing old.

She drew pictures of herself and her husband Glenn in practically every pose and mood one can think of relating to aging: The two of them on the front porch swing held precariously by a vine of bittersweet. Herself shortly after she had a stroke. Alzheimer's. She and Glenn planting a rose in the backyard or frolicking in the flower garden. The two of them napping in their reclining rockers or getting dressed for a night out. Her aged body in a hospital bed, kept alive by tubes and plugs -- her statement on the right to die.

In an interview several months before her death, she explained that she drew pictures of aging and old people, because she and Glenn were old. She said he made "a wonderful model" because of the lines in his face and that whenever she needed him to pose, she would call him at the office. If he weren't busy, he would come right home.

As for why Elizabeth Layton drew herself, she said it was because she was always available. But there was much more to it than that.

By the age of 68, Elizabeth Layton had reached the end of her rope. Having battled depression for 30 years, she could find few reasons to continue living. Shock treatments, drugs and psychotherapy had failed to alleviate her pain. The death of one of her children in 1976 plunged her even further into despair.

At the suggestion of her sister, who hoped Elizabeth would become the next Grandma Moses, she enrolled in her first drawing class at nearby Ottawa University. But unlike her sister, Elizabeth didn't expect or even think about becoming a famous artist; she simply needed something to do.

In the class, students were taught a technique, called contour drawing, in which the artist draws while looking at the object or subject rather than at the paper. In fact, the artist is never supposed to look at the paper while drawing. The idea is to imagine that the pencil is touching the subject itself. As the eye follows the outlines or contours, the pencil moves along the paper, correspondingly.

Elizabeth Layton found her subject in a mirror. Her teacher had suggested that the students do self-portraits at home. So, one evening when Glenn had gone to a high school football game, Elizabeth decided to draw a self-portrait while looking into a mirror. What she saw at age 68 was not what she wanted to see -- wrinkles, flabby skin, age spots, arthritic fingers, and a body that was too large -- but that's exactly what she drew onto the paper. For the next six months, she drew obsessively for 10 hours a day. At the end of that period, she realized that her depression had gone away. It had all come out onto the paper, in her self-portraits.

These drawings were unlike anything her teacher, friends, and family had ever seen. Elizabeth herself had never seen anything like them before. Art was meant to be pretty; these were anything but. The drawings were so strange that, for a while, she hid them away under the bed and in the closet.

Ironically, it is some of these same drawings that have been exhibited in the past 12 years in more than 150 towns across the country. Although Elizabeth Layton's drawings deal with many social issues -- the homeless, capital punishment, racial prejudice, and women's rights -- she is probably best known for her portrayals of old age. A curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City has credited Elizabeth Layton with creating what may be the most significant body of work which deals with aging.

Several years ago, she completed a series of 16 drawings about life in a nursing home, which are now on permanent display at the University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City, Missouri. The series, entitled "This Motherless Child," was inspired by the artist's weekly visits to her 91-year-old aunt in a nursing home in Wellsville.

The first drawing shows an old woman being escorted from her home, leaving behind her car keys, newspaper, and other personal belongings. The next drawings deal with her frustrations with life in a nursing home -- lack of privacy in showers and fellow patients who are also angry at having been taken from their homes. Following these are drawings that show more pleasant aspects of life in the nursing home -- bingo games and crafts classes, the presentation of a birthday cake by a staff member, and the crowning of the home's king and queen. By the 16th and final drawing, the woman appears to have found peace at the home.

In the interview last year, Elizabeth Layton explained the drawings this way: "I started the series to show how inhumane nursing homes are," the artist said. "But midway through the series, I changed my mind. I realized that the homes are not merely places where you go to die. They are where you go to live until you die. That is a big difference."

After seeing the drawings, Dr. William Bartholome found a permanent place for them at the K.U. Medical Center's newly constructed Clendening History of Medicine Museum and Library.