A CELEBRATION OF CANVAS AND LIFE

that both he and the film are able to recover from this wanton domestic violence. Maud quietly asserts herself as an equal partner in what would soon become a marriage, handling whatever bookkeeping is required of an itinerant, unlettered fish pedlar, and painting colourful nature scenes on the side. (Sometimes literally, as in on the side of their house.)

Maud finds an early patron in Sandra (Kari Matchett), a New Yorker with a Katharine Hepburn accent who’s vacationing in the Maritimes, and both clearly feel they’ve made a deal when Sandra agrees to pay $5 (plus postage!) for one of her tiny oil paintings.

A newspaper story then leads to a visit from a CBC camera crew, and growing fame. The passage of the years is evident only from the increasingly modern cars that sometimes stop at their house, and from the news that “vice-president Nixon” wants one of her works. (The artist died in 1970.)

As wonderful as the performances are, I have to go back to that house. In real life it is about three metres on a side, smaller than most garden sheds. The crew created a replica that was just a touch larger in each dimension to allow for easier filming, and we watch as the years pass and Lewis gradually fills up the dark walls, the door and even the window with brightly coloured images.

This is a painter whose canvas was her life, and whose life her canvas. Maudie is a magnificent celebration of both. ∂∂∂½