Elizabeth Layton

When Elizabeth "Grandma" Layton, born around 1910 in Wellsville, began creating art at the age of 68, she unwittingly embarked on a steady ascent to national recognition, the culmination of which was a one-woman show at the Smithsonian Institution. As a way to deal with her life-long depression, Layton took art classes, created drawings, and wrote descriptions of her work. She had no way of knowing the change art would make in her life. Many of her best-known drawings deal with important social issues. Although her work received national exposure, she refused to sell it. Art was important to her purely as self-expression. She used her works to make social commentary and to aid causes she supported. Layton died in 1993.