Exhibit showcases unorthodox works of Maud Lewis

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This article was published 16/02/2024 (962 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

An estate was the furthest thing on Maud Lewis’s mind when she painted her folk-art scenes of farms, bridges and animals during her lifetime.

She had been stricken with arthritis since her childhood and lived in poverty in Marshalltown, N.S., with her husband Everett.

Since her health prevented her from securing a regular job, she did what she loved — painting and selling her works to anyone interested, for as little as $5 or $10 apiece — to help pay the bills.

She painted and sold countless works, many of which were similar but never the same, beginning in the 1940s until her death in 1970 at the age of 67.

She would never see the kind of wealth it now takes to purchase one of her paintings, some of which sell for more than $50,000.

Thirty of those are on display at a new exhibition, Transitioning Treasures, at Mayberry Fine Art’s Exchange District gallery at 212 McDermot Ave. Many of the works are commissions from a family in New Brunswick.

Tourists would stop by and purchase Lewis’s paintings directly from her; they became Maritimes souvenirs and spread across North America.

“She painted on her cupboards, she painted on her windows, she painted on her walls,” says Bill Mayberry, founder and president of the family business, who has bought and sold hundreds of Lewis’s works, both before and after the 2016 film Maudie — which starred Sally Hawkins and Ethan Hawke as Maud and Everett Lewis — added to the interest in Lewis’s story and her art.

Art was Lewis’s life, Mayberry says. Not only did she paint on Masonite and beaverboard, which is similar to particle board, she added birds and other animals to scallop shells she found on the beaches near her home, five of which are part of the exhibition.

Even more rare are Lewis’s paintings adorning dustpans; one of them, Black Cat and Kittens, hangs in the exhibition along with works on more traditional backdrop, such as boards and panels, including The Carriage Ride, a 1955 painting priced at $50,500.

“It’s the only one we’ve ever had in over 300 Maud Lewises we’ve sold, so it’s a rare find,” Mayberry says of the yellow dustpan, adorned with three black cats and flowers. “The scallop shells are rare as well.”

Transitioning Treasures is on display until March 9. On March 1, Mayberry and his son, Shaun, who is the company’s Canadian art specialist, will host a talk on Lewis’s paintings as part of First Friday in the Exchange.

The Mayberrys will also discuss art forgeries, and how keen some people are to cash in on the growing interest and value in paintings by Lewis and other artists.

Bill Mayberry has an example of a well-copied fake created from a photocopy. Among the details that give it away are the paint itself — the forgery is made from acrylic paint rather than oil-based paint used to protect boats, which was all Lewis could afford during her lifetime.

— Alan Small