Q: There is an interesting piece of art outside of Verna Belle’s Café by Elizabeth Layton. Can you tell us more about the artist?

Elizabeth Layton is one of my favorite artists, as I appreciate her story and love the messages in her work. She is a native Kansan from Wellsville. She is best known for her blind contour drawings in which she only looks at the object she is drawing and not at the actual paper. She slowly traces an outline as her eyes track the edges of the model or object in which she is drawing. While this is an impressive feat in itself, it is the stories her drawings tell along with her own life’s story that have made her so widely known.

Following her family’s strong tradition in writing and journalism, Layton was the managing editor for the Wellsville Globe in her younger years. Through her family and her profession, she developed strong opinions on social issues and societal norms. After divorcing her husband, she raised her five children as a single parent, and struggled with extreme depression and bi-polar disorder. After her constant battle with depression, many attempts at shock therapy and her son’s untimely death in 1976, Layton was at her breaking point. A year and many failed therapy sessions later, at the age of 68, she took a drawing class in which she learned the art of blind contour drawing. As life’s uncontrollable circumstances took their toll on Layton, she turned to her new found passion of drawing as therapy. Through her art, Layton depicts her life struggles and many social issues and societal norms placed on women, elders and specifically grandmothers. This, she claims, was her saving grace.

Elizabeth Layton passed in 1993 at the age of 83. Through her artistic career she has been hailed as the “Van Gogh of contour drawing,” and her artwork can be seen in over 200 museums across the country, including the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American Art and right here at Meadowlark Hills. I am including an image of my favorite piece of hers; I have this print in my office. Elizabeth Layton’s legacy lives on not only through her art, but also through the Elizabeth Layton Foundation. Her Foundation has developed Elizabeth Layton centers, two in Kansas, one in Franklin and the other in Miami county. The Elizabeth Layton Centers are Community Mental Health Centers, offering a variety of support services.

Thank you for another great question. Please keep them coming.