Elaine Clayton is a fine artist and children’s book author and illustrator.
Elaine accepts commissions for murals, portraits, studio and landscape painting. She has recently completed murals for businesses and private homes in Connecticut’s Litchfield and Fairfield counties. She offers author visit and artist-in-residence programs to schools, libraries, and other audiences.
Elaine Clayton was born in the Texas Panhandle and lived in in Texas, Kansas, and Georgia before moving to New England, where she now makes her home. She attended the Atlanta College of Art, where she received the Joel C. Reeves Scholarship for Outstanding Achievement, and earned a Masters Degree in Illustration from the School of Visual Arts in New York City. Elaine taught elementary school in Atlanta and Boston and has worked in Cesar Chavez camps for Spanish and Indian migrants, and as a community organizer.
Elaine's first children's book, Pup in School, was published in 1993, while she was working as a teacher at the Atrium School in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "I grew up in a big family and learned the importance of lively conversation and storytelling," Elaine says. "As I grew up, my private world was one involving characters I drew, whole families of people with stories I made up. Before and while studying art in college, I worked with children—never doing art without being at times surrounded by children to even out the intensity of painting and drawing, and never working with children without bringing my creative process (and theirs) to the forefront.
"Eventually, children asked that I put my stories on paper, not disposable marker boards or chalk boards where they disappeared when storytime was over. I had to do as they asked since, as a teacher, I expected stories from them on paper! That was when I began pursuing publication of my work, and I have loved the entire process. I make stories involving the same types of characters I made up as a child, always meeting new ones in real life along the way. I want more than anything to encourage children to delight in their view of the world and, through art and stories, change the world by showing us what they see."
Elaine is the author and illustrator of three more picture books for children, Ella's Trip to the Museum, The Yeoman's Daring Daughter and the Princes in the Tower, and A Blue Ribbon for Sugar. She has illustrated a number of books for middle-grade and young adult readers, including the Hamlet Chronicles series by Gregory Maguire, and The Georges and the Jewels, by Jane Smiley.
Elaine's illustrations have appeared in the New York Times and other publications.
In addition to writing and illustrating for children, Elaine continues to work as a painter, pursuing both independent work and mural, portrait, and other commissions. She has presented work at exhibitions at the Woodruff Memorial Arts Center, Atlanta; the Visual Club, New York; the Art Directors Club, New York, the New York Women's Foundation, New York, and elsewhere.
Contact Elaine