I have loved Maud Lewis’s work since I was young. Somewhere, somehow, I remember seeing her bright colours and whimsical scenes. Might’ve been on an art calendar at Coles, or in a pile of art books in a bargain bin. I remember hearing, or learning, that she was a Nova Scotia painter, and that she was sometimes referred to as “Canada’s Grandma Moses.” That she charged $5 for her paintings back in 1965 astounds me. If she could see those paintings of hers now, as I did yesterday morning at the McMichael Gallery, she might be shocked beyond all belief. She didn’t want to be greedy, but she actually undersold the beauty of her gift.
Now, in the gallery gift shop, you can buy Maud Lewis mugs, key chains, art cards, and books. Everything, all of her work, is bright and lively, without shadows. The irony is that she had a difficult life, living in poverty and with serious physical challenges, with many shadows. In that way, she reminds me of so many women artists (literary ones, too) throughout history. She sold her work from her tiny house, often times with the paint still wet, for $5 a painting. Imagine that. Imagine her selling those little pieces for $5, and worrying that $10 would be too much to ask. She made herself smaller than she needed to, but so much of that was due to her life experiences.
Still, then she made her life brighter than ever by painting every inch of her home with her husband, Everett. He was someone who interests me. He didn’t like that she had her own mind, that she spoke it, and he was recorded once–in an old 1965 documentary–saying that she really ought to pay heed to his ideas, but she never did, and somehow they worked as a couple. Maybe it was because she was a commodity for him, and there are stories about how he buried the money she made from the paintings in jam jars around the property. He didn’t trust banks, and he likely didn’t trust her. Today, I wonder…would she have stayed with him. I kind of hope she wouldn’t, to be honest, but I also can see how he helped her to paint and how he afforded her that space, even if it was one that was rooted in poverty.
Maud was born in 1901, but she said she was born in 1903. Her childhood was purported to be a ‘happy period,’ but she was mercilessly teased because of the way she looked. Some people said she had been stricken by polio, but she actually had juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. She disliked what she thought of as a deformed chin, and often hid her hands in photos, tucking them into her elbows. Then, they called it ‘teasing,’ but now we would recognize it as bullying, pure and simple. The videos and photos of her, when she lived in the tiny house with Everett, show a tiny woman who seemed frail and fragile. She never really went beyond her part of Nova Scotia. She didn’t care to. She had Everett. She had her paints and brushes. She travelled through the paintings she made. She escaped into them.
If you’ve seen the film Maudie, with Ethan Hawke as Everett Lewis, and with Sally Hawkins as Maud, it’s rather a romanticized version of their relationship. If you didn’t know the story, you’d think it was a pure love story. She was thirty-seven and he was forty-four. She was an old maid by most people’s standards. Everett was looking for a housekeeper. He found a wife. Some stories say that he was terribly controlling. The film version doesn’t show that, of course, because Hollywood likes “biographical romantic dramas.’ After her parents died, Maud went to live with an aunt, which is how she came to meet Everett.
Who is to say what love looks like, from the inside of a relationship, or from the outside? Everett knew Maud had her own mind, even if he didn’t really like it all of the time. They say he was the person who bought her the paint brushes and encouraged her to paint. Some would say he did this because she began to make money, but he did this before she was famous. Maud and Everett were what people in the area called ‘characters.’ I think Everett met Maud and knew that he had been living in a world that was painted grey. Maud brought him colour and light. She literally painted every surface of that little house. When her health got worse, Everett cared for her. There was, I think, some sort of love there, not in a romantic sweeping orchestral way that Hollywood would prefer, but in the way he accepted her as she was, and in the way she accepted him as he was, and in the way he cared for her near the end of her life.
Despite what people say about Everett, he’s usually in quite a few of her paintings. You can tell him by the outfit and the specific sort of hat that he liked to wear. Maud must’ve held him in high regard, to include him in so many paintings.
I’m likely not qualified to speak about how relationships work because I’ve been on my own for quite some time now…but as a writer, I’m fascinated by other people’s relationships. Often, what they look like on the outside (to the world beyond a house and its walls) isn’t what they are on the inside. All of that ‘surface and underneath’ stuff intrigues me, as an observer and writer, as someone who watches how people work. This fascination works its way into my plays, novels, and short stories more than into the poems, most likely because I’m working with characters rather than stanzas. It’s also a fascination because I think of my parents’ marriage and have questions about how it worked, or didn’t. Maud and Everett intrigue me, mostly I think, because they were thought to be ‘odd’ by most of the people around. How are they ‘odd’ when couples like Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, or Georgia O’Keefe and Alfred Stieglitz, or Mary and Christopher Pratt were often perceived merely as ‘eccentric’ or ‘artistic.’ Put an artist with an artist, and chaos ensues. None of these pairings were without anger or passion. It may speak to how artists shouldn’t be with artists, even though some would think it smart. Maybe why Maud and Everett worked was because they were different. However it worked, it did.
What I love about Maud is this: she was a survivor. She faced the loss of her parents and her erstwhile brother, and then went to live with an aunt. She faced physical hardship and often ignored pain in her hands and body when she painted. She painted with a passion that I understand. When something comes through you, creatively, you’re hard pressed to stop it, and you do what you do because there’s nothing else for it. I love that Maud–despite her poor health, as well as living in poverty–painted such beautiful things of the world she saw around her. She didn’t need to go far; she only needed to watch, to observe, to see what she saw, and then paint it. I don’t like the notion that her work is simplistic. For me, I guess, I see it as an art that is pure, without smoke and mirrors. She rose above her life’s challenges and found her freedom and joy in the art she created. That is inspiring. 
Maud Lewis painted shutters for people in the area where she lived. Of all the things at the McMichael exhibit, I loved these best. Her common motifs are birds, butterflies, flowers, oxen, and cats.
Sally Hawkins as Maud Lewis in the film “Maudie.”
What I love most about Maud, though, is her smile and spirit. You wouldn’t know she was living in a tiny house, with a challenging husband who might have tried her patience more often than she would have liked. You wouldn’t guess that she was missing anything in her life. She loved creating art. You can see it in her eyes and smile. That, to me, is one more reason to love Maud…
I’m not an art historian or anything fancy schmancy like that, but if you want to see an exhibit that will touch your heart deeply, then this is the one for you. It’s on at the McMichael until Jan 6, 2020.
If you go, take a deep breath, let the colour inside, and then feel Maud’s work light you up. She was a lighthouse. If you ask me, she still is…
peace,
k.
The Republic of Poetry 