The big small world of folk artist Maud Lewis
From a distance, the paintings of rural life in Nova Scotia by folk artist Maud Lewis are simple and unsophisticated. Her life followed a similar trajectory, with more than a hint of tragedy. She left school at age 14 after years of being mocked for her small frame and obvious deformities. She lived most of her adult life in poverty in a tiny house beside a rural highway outside Yarmouth, on the province’s southern shore. In her later years she received some recognition, but in her lifetime she never received more than $10 for a painting. Lewis’s difficulties began, in fact, before she was born in 1903. “She suffered from a series of birth defects that left her fingers painfully deformed, her shoulders hunched, and her chin pressed into her chest,” related a 1997 article in Maclean’s magazine. “She spent most of her adult life as a virtual recluse in
