Biography

In 1987, Ms. Laybourn received a Bachelor of Art degree and in 1989, a Masters of Art degree in Drawing and Painting from Humboldt State University in Arcata, CA. In the Fall of 1989 through the Spring of 1992, she served as an adjunct instructor at Humboldt State and taught foundations drawing courses. During this time, she was also contracted part-time at College of the Redwoods in neighboring Eureka to teach foundation drawing and art history.

Laybourn was accepted into a Masters of Fine Arts program at the University of New Mexico located in Albuquerque in 1992 and graduated from that program in August 1995 receiving an MFA in Drawing and Painting along with a minor in Art History and was awarded the Raymond Jonson Fellowship for academic and artistic excellence.

In the Fall of 1996, she was contracted as an adjunct instructor at UNM and taught foundation drawing and painting through Spring 1998.

Feeling a sense of community obligation and desiring to be near her family, Laybourn moved back to Kenosha, WI in the spring of 1998. Once there, she was contracted in the Fall as an adjunct instructor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and taught foundation drawing through the spring of 2000. In 1999, she became a founding member of Lemon Street Gallery, a local artist cooperative, where she taught community art education classes in painting, drawing, mosaic, and color theory through the spring of 2020. She has also served nine years as the Artist Coordinator for the Mayor’s Youth Employment in the Arts Program Mosaic Project through the Kenosha Public Museum designing and directing youth-at-risk in creating numerous, large-scale public mosaics found throughout Kenosha. Currently, Ms. Laybourn is teaching drawing, painting, and color theory classes at the Kenosha Public Museum and is offering private and semi-private lessons in painting.

In 2012, Ms. Laybourn was awarded an Osbourne/Skekic Foundation Fellowship through the Racine Art Museum. The exhibition, More Than Icons: Theresa De Avila, Billie Holiday, Joan of Arc, Diana Spencer, opened August 2013 and ran through December 2013.