Lance Woolaver

Maud Lewis World Without Shadows

George Dillon Woolaver

Lance Gerard Woolaver's World Without Shadows

Christmas with Maud Lewis is a brilliant gift book featuring works by Maud Lewis, Nova Scotia's most famous folk painter, and text by Lance Woolaver, her foremost interpreter. From 1938 until she died in 1970, Maud Lewis and her husband Everett lived in poverty in a one-room house near Digby, Nova Scotia. Her hands twisted by rheumatoid arthritis, Maud earned her living by painting buoyant pictures of nature, pets, farm animals, people, and scenery. In Christmas with Maud Lewis, Lance Woolaver describes how this spirited woman celebrated Christmas in her life and art. For about 15 years, Maud painted Christmas cards in watercolours, and throughout her career she delighted in making oil paintings of all kinds of Christmas and winter scenes. Her vision of Christmas embraces skaters sliding every which way, passengers leaning over the box of a horse-drawn sleigh, smiling oxen in their best harness, and bluebirds building a nest in their snow-covered house. The 100 images in Christmas with Maud Lewis are all from the Woolaver family collection, including a painting of baby Max in his cradle beside the Christmas tree and another of little Pearl collecting gaily wrapped presents from the mailbox. Many of these images have never before appeared in print.

Christmas with Maud Lewis

Maud Lewis (1903-1970) was recognized and revered in her own lifetime. She offered her endearing images to the passing world through her roadside sign, Paintings for Sale, and was rewarded by the enthusiastic response she received from both the community and tourists as well as from art collectors. The Illuminated Life of Maud Lewis is an invitation to share once again with the world the perceptions of this celebrated Nova Scotia folk artist in prose, photographs, and reproductions of her works.

The Illuminated Life of Maud Lewis

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

The Heart on the Door

Maud Lewis

Follows a horse-drawn mailsleigh delivering Christmas packages and parcels in old Nova Scotia.

Lance Woolaver

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