Background
Elizabeth Hope Converse was born in Wellsville, Kansas in 1909. Her father Asa Finch Converse was a newspaper publisher, and her mother May Frink Converse wrote a weekly column for the newspaper.
Elizabeth Hope Converse was born in Wellsville, Kansas in 1909. Her father Asa Finch Converse was a newspaper publisher, and her mother May Frink Converse wrote a weekly column for the newspaper.
May Frink Converse was named the Poet Laureate of Kansas in 1928. Layton became an artist in her sixties, when she took a drawing class at Ottawa University in 1977. Layton credited this new pursuit with curing her depression and comforting her grief over a son"s death in 1976.
She exhibited her drawings first in Kansas, and later throughout the United States. Collections of her work are also displayed in the Spencer Museum of Art and Lawrence Arts Center in Lawrence, Kansas, as well as at the Mulvane Art Museum in Topeka, Kansas.
In 1992, shortly before she died, Layton was the focus of shows at the Smithsonian"s National Museum of American Art and the Delaware Art Museum. In 2001, Layton was the only American artist featured in an exhibit of naive art at the Musée d"Art Brut & Art Singulier in Paris.
She experienced depression for much of her life, leading to some psychiatric hospitalizations and multiple rounds of electroconvulsive therapy. Layton died in 1993, age 85, after a stroke.
The Elizabeth Layton Center for Hope and Guidance is a mental health clinic in Kansas, named in the artist"s memory.
Layton"s Granddaughters, sisters Carla, Kathy and Judy Russell have published their Grandma"s memoir/biography "SIGNS ALONG THE WAY", compiling her short stories, writings and letters, excerpts from her Mother"s newspaper columns and lots of family history. This is her story before the art lieutenant sells for $20.00 and can be purchased at elizabethlayton.com.The sisters also maintain and update both her website and Facebook page, Elizabeth Layton, where they share pictures, and news of book signings and shows and exhibitions of Grandma Layton"s drawings.