Maud Lewis

Maud Kathleen Lewis (née Dowley; March 7, 1903 – July 30, 1970) was a Canadian folk artist from Nova Scotia.

She lived most of her life in poverty in a small house in Marshalltown, Nova Scotia.

Lewis' father John died in 1935, and her mother followed him in 1937.

After living with her brother for a short while, she moved to Digby, Nova Scotia to live with her aunt.

Dowley married Everett Lewis, a fish peddler from Marshalltown, on January 16, 1938, at the age of 34.

He also worked as the watchman at the county Poor Farm.

According to Everett, Maud showed up at his doorstep in response to an ad he had posted in the local stores for a "live-in or keep house" for a 40-year-old bachelor.

Several weeks later, they married.

They lived in Everett's one-room house with a sleeping loft, in Marshalltown, a few miles west of Digby.

Maud used the house as her studio, while Everett took care of the housework.

They lived mostly in poverty.

Maud Lewis accompanied her husband on his daily rounds peddling fish door-to-door, bringing along Christmas cards she had painted.

She sold the cards for five cents each, the same price her mother had charged for the cards she had made when Maud was a girl.

These cards proved popular with her husband's customers.

When Everett was hired as a night watchman at the neighbouring Poor Farm in 1939, Lewis began selling her Christmas cards and paintings directly from their home.

Everett encouraged Lewis to paint, and he bought her her first set of oils.

She expanded her range, using other surfaces for painting, such as pulp boards (beaverboards), cookie sheets, and Masonite.

Lewis was a prolific artist and also painted on more or less every available surface in their tiny home: walls, doors, breadboxes, and even the stove.

She completely covered the simple patterned commercial wallpaper with sinewy stems, leaves, and blossoms.

Lewis used bright colours in her paintings, and her subjects were often flowers or animals, including oxen teams, horses, birds, deer, and cats.

Many of her paintings are of outdoor scenes, including Cape Island boats bobbing on the water, horses pulling a sleigh, skaters, and portraits of dogs, cats, deer, birds, and cows.

Her paintings were inspired by childhood memories of the landscape and people around Yarmouth and South Ohio, as well as Digby locations such as Point Prim and Bayview.

Commercial Christmas cards and calendars also influenced her.

Lewis returned to the same subjects again and again, each time painting them slightly differently.

For instance, she made dozens, if not hundreds, of images of cats over the course of her career.

The serial nature of her practice was partly motivated by customer demand; she repeated compositions that sold well while discarding less popular ones.

She achieved national recognition in 1964 and 1965 for her cheerful paintings of landscapes, animals and flowers, which offer a nostalgic and optimistic vision of her native province.

Several books, plays and films have been produced about her.

She remains one of Canada's most celebrated folk artists.

Her works are displayed at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, as well as her restored house, whose walls she adorned with her art.

Lewis was born in South Ohio, Nova Scotia, the daughter of John and Agnes (Germain) Dowley.

She had one brother, Charles.

She was born with birth defects and ultimately developed rheumatoid arthritis, which reduced her mobility, especially in her hands.

Lewis' father was a blacksmith and harness maker who owned a harness shop in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia.

His business enabled Lewis to enjoy a middle-class childhood.

She was introduced to art by her mother, who instructed her in the making of watercolour Christmas cards to sell.

Lewis began her artistic career by selling hand-drawn and painted Christmas cards.

“I put the same things in, I never change,” she said of her style on the CBC program Telescope in 1965.

“Same colours and same designs.”

Many of her paintings are quite small, no larger than eight by ten inches, although she is known to have done at least five paintings that are 24 inches by 36 inches.