Depicting Old Age Honestly and Passionately
HUNGER, by Elizabeth Layton - April 18, 1985
Old age, to the unlearned, is winter; to the learned, it is harvest time.
-Judah Leib Lazerov
Theme: Turning Points (late-in-life transcendence)
I’ve always been drawn to stories of personal transformation, or “turning points” in people’s lives. The appeal for me is in the notion of change—your foreseeable life suddenly takes a new turn.
I had just such a moment in 1997 when an injury caused great loss leading to a re-evaluation in my life; as the scaffolding (metaphor) crumbled around me. I’d always been the athlete; and that was now threatened. Not having my body readily available to me caused me to consider physical frailty for the first time. I then learned; your challenges will come from what you most lean on in life. I had leaned on my physicality, and for a painful period, it was taken from me.
Someone very close to me shared a story of a turning point in her life the night she realized she was mortal and going to someday die. She laid in a fetal position on the floor of her kitchen weeping uncontrollably—alone; what the medieval mystics called “the dark night of the soul.” It was a reality confronting experience that made her stronger in the long run.
Normative Transitions vs. Turning Points
As human beings we all experience turning points in our lives. Several longitudinal studies have documented that most Americans report (often several) turning points.
Clasen studied 268 subjects in their mid fifties or early sixties and found that “more than 85% did feel that there had been turning points in their lives, and most could identify more than one.” For men and women, marriage and career events were most frequently mentioned as turning points; and were associated with greater personal autonomy, a different self concept, and more confidence.
These kinds of normative transformations like leaving home and/or choosing a vocation, are on-course and “appropriate” for the chronological age. But, what interests me most are the turning points which are discontinuous with what would be predicted from past life experience and move the individual in a different direction.
According to Harven and Masoaka, normative transitions become turning points when; 1) they coincide with or are followed by a crisis; 2) are accompanied by family conflict; 3) lead to unexpected consequences; or 5) require constant adjustments.
Late-in-Life Discontinuous Changes
For years I’ve kept an article (since 1994) titled; “The Unflinching Eye of Elizabeth Layton.” It’s a tale of a late bloomer, the creative spirit, and the transformative power of turning points.
Layton lived some 30 years tormented with the perils of depression in Wellsville, Kansas. This woman had under gone shock treatments, tried medications, and psychotherapy—all failed to bring her spirit alive. The death of a child in 1976 plunged her further into the darkness and at the age of 68 she felt at the end of her rope.
The turning point came when her sister suggested she enroll in a drawing class at the local university; there she learned contour drawing (the artist draws while looking at the object, never taking her eye off the subject matter, or lifting the pencil off the paper).
The Wrinkled-Self: Depicting Old Age Honestly and Passionately
One evening her husband was out, so she decided to follow through on her assignment of a self-portrait. Peering into a small mirror she began to draw the contours of her face—at 68 it was not what she wanted to see. She had wrinkles, flabby skin, age spots, arthritic fingers, and a body too large…but she drew what she saw.
The drawings were unlike anything her teacher, friends, or family had ever seen. Drawing obsessively for 10 hours a day for the next 6 months, she realized at the end of that period the depression as gone.
Her drawings won world wide acclaim and have been exhibited across the country including the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City and The National Museum of American Art in Washington, D.C., as well as featured in People, Life, and Parade magazines.
Laytons’ work takes head-on the social issues of the time—the homeless, capital punishment, racial prejudice, and women’s rights. And she is best known for her portrayals of old age.
Two works which exemplify her subject matter are; “The Motherless Child” which is a series of 16 drawings, was inspired by weekly visits to her 91-year old aunt in a nursing home; and “My Own Gulliver in Lilliput” showing Mrs. Layton tied to the ground, hamstrung by childishness, jealousy, timidity, laziness, and fear of mother’s disapproval—emotions that cause havoc in women’s lives.
Mrs. Layton died in 1993 at the age of 83, but not before discovering that it’s never too late to become what you might have been.
See
Do Not Go Gently: The Power of Imagination in Aging
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