Submitted by: Maia Stark, Gallery Assistant
This lucky Gallery Assistant had the great pleasure to spend
some time on the East Coast this June, and while being visually overwhelmed by
cliffs and waves and whales, she managed to spend some time at the Art Gallery
of Nova Scotia and, on a friend’s recommendation, went to check out the AGNS’s
permanent collection of Maud Lewis’s work.
Despite knowing a bit about folk art (or so I thought) I
hadn’t heard of Maud Lewis before this moment—to my own surprise, as she is
apparently one of Canada’s most beloved and well-known folk artists. Her life
story, struggles, and seemingly never ending positive outlook on life make her
story a compelling one.
Maud Dowley was born in 1903 in South Ohio, Nova Scotia. As a
child who developed juvenile rheumatoid arthritis as well as being born with
some physical disabilities, Maud often played by herself and stayed close to
home. To assist her family in her own way, she began painting and selling
Christmas cards. Maud’s parents died while she was still quite young, only in
her late twenties, and it was her brother who inherited the family home. She
stayed with her brother and his wife for some time, but then moved to Digby to
live with her aunt—here was where she met Everett Lewis, a fish peddler who
further encouraged her painting and the two were married in 1938 (AGNS).
Having little money and little access to proper painting materials, Maud used
any and all materials available to her. She painted with hobby paint and house
paint on board, cardboard, dustpans, even baking trays. I could imagine that,
if she was a contemporary artist now, these pieces may be considered sculptural
in form.
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| Maud Lewis in her small home in Marshaltown, Nova Scotia (Source) |
Everett and Maud’s house was small—only 16 square metres in
area, consisting of one room with a sleeping loft upstairs (AGNS).They
had no electricity, and no plumbing their entire lives. A poor couple, Everett
supported them selling fish while Maud sold her paintings and cards. Maud’s
rheumatism worsened as she got older, and so spent most of her time painting at
the window, advertising her pieces through a roadside sign. Maud’s work, though
locally known, sold for very little most of her life. The most she ever received for a painting was $10. Despite Maud’s secluded life, she clearly understood visual composition
and colour theory, as the AGNS
points out:
"Although she was not a formally trained artist, Maud's
work demonstrates that she had a strong sense of composition, learned from
close observation of any visual material that came her way--postcards,
calendars, greeting cards…Her early paintings are quite complex in arrangement
as she tackles harbour scenes, rolling farmland and countryside.”
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| Oxen by Maud Lewis (source) |
Recognition and fitting payment for her work came much too
late—after a CBC TV broadcast and multiple newspaper stories about the folk
artist in 1965, Maud fell and broke her hip; her health declined and although
she was getting requests for paintings
from people all over the world, it was difficult for her to acquiesce (Artist Biography
Database). Maud passed away in 1970, having lived most of her life in
poverty and with difficult health problems. As is the case with so many
valuable artists unrecognized during their lifetime, Maud’s work now sells for
upwards of hundreds of thousands of dollars: money she and her husband were
never able to use to help bring them self out of poverty. Despite her struggles,
she seemed to have a joyful outlook and transcended the circumstances of her life
with a rich archive of “bright and evocative paintings” (Triad
film productions).
The AGNS not only has
a large collection of Lewis’s work, but they’ve also reconstructed and preserved
her small home from Marshaltown, Nova Scotia, which had been adorned with years
of painted decoration. Maud had, during their marriage, painted most of their
home with decorations of birds, flowers and insects.
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| The house as it appears in the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia (source) |
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| Caption: The interior of the Lewis home (source) |
After Maud’s death in 1970, and the death of Everett in 1979,
the painted house began to deteriorate. A group of concerned citizens from the
area started the Maud Lewis Painted House Society, their goal being to save the
valued landmark. In 1984 the house was sold to the province of Nova Scotia and
put in the care of the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia (AGNS).
A testament to the importance of community and the local artist, the little
house reconstructed in the gallery space is a wonderful sight. Maud’s work reflects a make-do aesthetic, one
which is culturally relevant to settler generations of Nova Scotia.
