Painted House of Maud Lewis: Conserving a Folk Art Treasure

For many years, Maud Lewis was one of Nova Scotia's best-loved folk painters. In the 1990s she was embraced by the rest of the country when the landmark exhibition of her work The Illuminated Life of Maud Lewis travelled across Canada. By the time the tour was over, half a million people had become acquainted with her delightful work.

Between 1938, when she married Everett Lewis, until her death in 1970, Maud Lewis lived in a tiny one-room house near Digby, Nova Scotia. Over the …