The unflinching eye of Elizabeth Layton

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

"These drawings help address what I see as a very fundamental set of questions that speak to the meaning of aging," he said. "Here is someone who, as an aged person, did not go to Florida to play shuffleboard. Here is someone who at the age of 68 began a new and productive part of her life. And, through drawing, she finds a whole new purpose to her life. Not only was she doing therapy for herself, but she was also communicating with the rest of us."

Reflecting on Mrs. Layton's work, Elizabeth Broun, director of the National Museum of American Art, said she provided "proof that we all have an artist in the making in our own lives."

In 1994, exhibits of Elizabeth Layton's drawings will appear at the: Univ. of Texas in El Paso, (Aug. 1 - Sept. 22); Univ. of Alabama, Florence, (Sept. 1-22); Art Space, Lima, OH (Oct. 3-24); Ohio Northern Univ., Ada, OH (Oct 3-24); Albuquerque Museum, NM (Nov. 4-30); Cable Access of Dallas, TX (Nov. 4-30); and Bakersfield Museum of Art, CA (Dec. 15 - Jan. 24).

For more information about Elizabeth Layton's exhibits and books, contact Exhibits USA, 912 Baltimore St., Suite 700, Kansas City, MO 64105, (816) 421-1388.

For talks about the artist, contact Don Lambert at 606 West 6th St., Topeka, KS, (913) 234-0759.

For posters and lithographs of Elizabeth Layton's work, contact the Lawrence Art Center, 9th and Vermont Streets, Lawrence, KS 66044, (913) 843-2787.

Drawing On Life

Elizabeth Layton may have spent most of her life not too far from her front porch swing in Wellsville, Kansas, but her art speaks forcefully about a much wider America. That was certainly apparent in the restrospective of her work, "Elizabeth Layton: Drawing on Life," which was exhibited in 1992 at the National Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C.

Many of the drawings selected for that exhibit reveal ugly truths and tragedies we'd rather not see -- the patchwork quilt of AIDS victims' names covering the globe, American gluttony at the table while the starving search for falling crumbs, the misery of American Indians in living color, and black Americans forced to flee from the invisible fences of white suburbia.

There's undoubtedly a connection between the national struggles she portrayed and the inner ones she dealt with in her own back yard -- while hanging out the wash, cleaning the sink for the millionth time, or contemplating herself in the mirror she so relentlessly held to her thoughts.

In a drawing called, "Masks," viewers see the different faces that Elizabeth Layton wore and that many other women keep stored in their closets -- irritation, a happy smile, suspicion, wary appraisal, and, occasionally, meanness. Elizabeth Layton's drawings admit faces women might much rather have kept under the veil.

Another drawing, "My Own Gulliver in Lilliput," shows Mrs. Layton tied to the ground, hamstrung by childishness, jealousy, timidity, laziness, and fear of mother's disapproval -- emotions that can cause havoc in a woman's life.

Mrs. Layton knew a lot about these destructive feelings, having struggled with serious depression for 30 years before she started to draw and learned how to keep despair at bay.