JOY IN OIL: MAUD LEWIS AT THE MCMICHAEL GALLERY

Exhibition Reviews | Mary Wallace

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Summer Scene with Cows (detail), oil on board. (Photograph Courtesy of Mary Wallace) 

I visited the McMichael Gallery’s Maud Lewis show on Thanksgiving weekend with my parents, this kind of wholesome excursion seems fitting for Lewis’s work. Lewis (1903-1970) is one of Canada’s best known folk artists and female painters and this exhibition features some rarely seen works from private collections in Nova Scotia, mostly small oil paintings as well as some painted shuttlers and Christmas decorations.

Despite the lifelong struggle with rheumatoid arthritis that limited her mobility, Lewis began painting and drawing at an early age, creating Christmas cards and paintings to sell at roadsides. Most of her work was made in the one room house she shared with her husband Everett Lewis in Marshalltown, Nova Scotia, which she covered completely in hand-painted designs. Lewis’s life was marked with tragedy, but looking at her paintings you would never know it. The artwork and the exhibition itself radiate joy and enthusiasm with their bright blocks of colour and whimsical subject matter. One of the things I appreciated about this exhibition was that, while it did not shy away from the illness and poverty that affected Lewis’s life, it did not focus on those aspects either. In fact, the gallery’s stated purpose for the exhibition is to present Lewis’s work as objects of aesthetic and artistic value and not merely as artifacts of tragedy.

These works, while unconventional in style, are of certainly of aesthetic value. This snow laden pine tree painted on glass, for example, shows us Lewis’s unique use of thick unblended paint.

Winter Scene, oil on glass. (Photograph Courtesy of Mary Wallace) 

Winter Scene (detail). (Photograph Courtesy of Mary Wallace)

This cow grazing in a summer field conveys wonderful depth despite the flat application of colour.

Untitled (Cow and Apple Blossoms - Bear River), 1950s, oil on board. (Photograph Courtesy of Mary Wallace)

More than just technical skill Lewis’s work creates a unique atmosphere, the feeling that each piece has been created with a loving hand. These paintings have an undeniable sincerity and humour to them, I don’t think I have ever smiled so much at an exhibition.

How could one not smile looking at this frowning cat?

White Cat, 1965/1966, oil on Beaverboard. (Photograph Courtesy of Mary Wallace)

I left this exhibition ready to go home and start painting. Some of you reading this may look at these pictures and think to yourselves “I could do that”, if that’s the case, I encourage you to do so. If Maud Lewis shows us anything it is the uplifting power of bringing something joyful into existence; if you are an I-could-do-that person then by all means get to it, that’s what Maud would have done.

Untitled (Butterflies), early 1960s, oil on board. (Photograph Courtesy of Mary Wallace)

Maud Lewis at the McMichael Gallery runs from June 29, 2019 to January 5, 2020, free with the price of admission (completely free if you bring your OMA card).