The unflinching eye of Elizabeth Layton

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

In a poignant drawing, called "Pandora's Box," Elizabeth Layton holds on to a man's head, labeled "No Hope," by a few strands of hair -- trying to pull him back into Pandora's box from which all the other ills of the world have already escaped. Viewers will feel the struggle and want her to hang on with all her might for her sake and theirs.

Elizabeth Layton's drawings of herself and her husband Glenn are physical, immediate and alive -- whether it's her fleshy forearms, Glenn in his underwear on the bathroom scale, Glenn the Magnificent in his loin cloth, or the joyful sensuousness of the red roses they are planting in the yard.

When Elizabeth Layton began to draw, she opened a lid on a box she'd hidden away and let everything out -- the demons and the butterflies -- expanding and enriching her own life and the lives of her viewers.