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I have a new hero. I pick books based on their covers, and this one intrigued me. I found this lovely book at a thrift store in Ontario while on tour with the Oasis Chorale. It introduced me to Canadian folk artist Maud Lewis. She was born with physical deformities and lived with rheumatoid arthritis. Her mother taught her to paint when she was young. By the time she was thirty-four, she had lost both parents and moved in with an aunt. About a year later, she answered an ad for a housekeeper for a forty year old bachelor, and a few weeks after married the man who placed the ad, fish peddler Everett Lewis.
Eventually, he ended up keeping house while she painted. They were poor and lived in the one bedroom house with a loft pictured below. She sold hand-painted cards while he sold fish. After he sold the Model T, she painted from her home, using a TV tray for a table.
At the age of sixty-one, she received national recognition for her enthralling paintings as word spread and people began visiting her home to buy them. She sold them for four to five dollars each. She died a few years later in 1970 at the age of sixty-seven. Everett died nine years later during a burglary of their home (now on display at an art gallery), where it was rumored he kept jars full of money hidden. Evidently, that was true. Today, Maud's five dollar paintings sell for between $46,000-$66,000, and people collect her art. I know she wasn't perfect, but the beauty of her art stands strikingly at odds with the condition of her body and the quality of her life, and that impresses me.
Please scroll down to the bottom and see the precious hands that painted these charming works of art.
Below is a short documentary on Maud Lewis, filmed in 1965.