Liz Layton
The Opera of Staying Home
acrylic on canvas
2020
Liz Layton is an artist who primarily creates paintings with imagery sourced from physical places, childhood memories, and symbols connected to her matrilineal ancestry. She also creates music, short films, and interactive fiber art, under the multimedia project name, “Liz the Prophetess.” She is based in Tennessee.
Liz Layton is an artist who primarily creates mixed media paintings with imagery sourced from physical places, childhood memories, and symbols connected to her matrilineal ancestry. She frequently uses the image of rainbows in relation to bifröst or the rainbow-road between different worlds, personally referencing thoughts on the afterlife and the loss of her mother. Layton believes we all experience multiple symbolic “afterlives” during the time that we are alive – when one life phase ends, a new phase and way of living begins.
This blending of honoring memory with the present is visually executed within expressive mark-making and dream-like forms that are somewhat diluted in structure, but strong and vibrant in color and textural sheen. She utilizes iridescent, shimmering, and glittering materials alongside her water-based pigments as a way to transport the audience to an experience that is interactively unique, depending on light source and physical proximity to the painting.
Her main artist influences are Kate Bush, Andrew Thomas Huang, Perfume Genius, Ariana Papademetropoulos, and Eva Hesse. Layton also creates music, short films, and interactive fiber art, under the multimedia project name, “Liz the Prophetess.” She is based in Eastern Tennessee with her children, Strummer & Opal.
