By Gina Malone
Artist Evelyn Mayton has found a way to combine two passions: her appreciation of Southern literature and skill at portraiture. “I always had a talent for freehand renditions, but my dream as a child was to be a writer,” says Mayton, who lives near World’s Edge outside of Hendersonville and works from a studio within walking distance of home. In college, she took art classes, but primarily studied psychology, creative writing and art history.
Eudora Welty, work in progress. Evelyn Mayton, artist
A longtime fascination with the work of William Faulkner led her to take on the role of administrator of the William Faulkner Book Club on Facebook. “When I was 12 years old, I read The Sound and the Fury, not understanding at the time what I read,” she says, “but I became obsessed with his writing.” Since then, she has visited Rowan Oak, Faulkner’s Oxford, MS home, as well as other places associated with the author.
Carl Rollyson—biographer, journalist and professor emeritus of journalism at Baruch College, CUNY—discovered Mayton’s work when he joined the Facebook group. His book, William Faulkner Day by Day, published in October, is an in-depth exploration of the writer’s life and features a drawing by Mayton on its cover and 19 of her illustrations throughout its pages. “Her drawings provided a sensitive interpretation of the man and his world that expressed an intensity that was different from photographs—as good as some of them are,” Rollyson says. “I wanted readers to have that experience as well: to see Faulkner anew.”
William Faulkner illustration. Evelyn Mayton, artist
Among Rollyson’s favorite images included in the book are drawings of the telephone at Rowan Oak and one of Faulkner’s wife Estelle, which, he says “captures her lovely, wistful nature” in a way that no photograph that he has seen manages to do. “I made a few suggestions, but the drawings are an expression of Evelyn’s great devotion to understanding Faulkner’s art and life,” he adds.
“Many readers have told me that the cover portrait captures the keen concentration in Faulkner’s eyes,” says Rollyson. “They evoke an artist who saw so deeply into human character and history. And I think it takes an artist of Evelyn’s caliber, with her own devotion to Faulkner’s work, to show others why readers find him such a great figure.”
Mayton has since had a drawing of another literary icon, Flannery O’Connor, accepted for display in the special collections at Georgia College’s Ina Dillard Russell Library in Milledgeville, GA, where O’Connor lived and wrote from the time she was 15 years old. “To illustrate a person that is no longer living, I do refer to photos—often several,” Mayton says.
Continuing her exploration of southern literary icons, Mayton is working on drawings for an article about Eudora Welty, as well as several commissions.
See more of Evelyn’s work on Facebook at Evelyn’s Art Book. William Faulkner Day by Day was published by the University Press of Mississippi. Learn more at upress.state.ms.us.
