The family led a peripatetic life, visiting Europe several times and living for a time in New York.[2] The couple separated in 1932. Payne settled in Los Angeles. There she taught art and continued her painting.[3] Payne exhibited regularly, including at the Palette and Chisel Club, the Laguna Beach Art Association, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Pasadena Art Institute.[4]
She reunited with her husband in 1946 and she took care of him until his death from cancer in 1947.[2]
Payne died in Minneapolis, Minnesota on June 17, 1971.[2]
Her work is in the Laguna Art Museum[5] and the Minneapolis Institute of Art.[6]
In 1988 the Carnegie Art Museum held a retrospective of her work entitled Elsie Palmer Payne; Out of the Shadow.[4]