Maud Lewis

Book excerpt: Maud Lewis THE HEART ON THE DOOR is the first full-length biography of Maud Lewis (1901-1970), the famous Nova Scotia folk artist. It includes detailed accounts of her disabilities, including a childhood battle with the juvenile rheumatoid arthritis which twisted her hands and joints. Despite this deepening and painful affliction she completed and sold thousands of bright pictures and Christmas cards from her little one-room house in Marshalltown, Digby County, Nova Scotia, Canada. Throughout her marriage to the illiterate Poor Farm watchman, Everett Lewis, she suffered from poverty and loneliness, yet triumphed over all with her brilliant, colourful and happy paintings. Her husband would be murdered for his lockbox of savings taken from the sales of Maud's pictures, on New Year's Day of 1979. This book also gives a detailed account of the life of Everett Lewis and his incarceration as a child in the Digby County Poor Farm. This biography concludes that Maud Lewis, born Maud Catherine Dowley in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia in 1901, gave birth to a daughter, Catherine Dowley, in 1928, and traces the life of Maud's daughter until her passing. Catherine's attempts to contact and be accepted by her mother, Maud Lewis, are documented. Catherine's father, Emery Allen, the love of Maud's life, abandoned Maud to the scandal of small-town life and to her increasing disabilities and loneliness. Excerpts: "This is a story written in heartbreak. It is the story of a child's wish to be accepted as a human being. It is a story of murder, poverty and treasure. It is the story of the worth of art in the struggle against pain. This is a story of broken families, of lonely lives, of a lost love and abandonment. It is a story of murder and a lockbox treasure. It is the story of a man who made a woman pay for his own frailties. All must be taken together. They belong to each other." "Many of the famous of our time - the actor Peter Falk, Premier Robert L. Stanfield, the actor Judy Dench - would come to admire Maud's pictures. Her pictures cheered them up. As with many, however, who came to visit with Maud in her crooked little house, these famous would never know the strange secrets of this difficult life. Lance Woolaver, Digby County, Nova Scotia, 2016