Finding worldly woman behind ‘naive’ artist
Q&A SALLY HAWKINS
The star of Maudie fell in love with art of Nova Scotia’s Maud Lewis, who immortalized everyday beauty
In the 1965 Star Weekly article that helped launch her to international fame, Nova Scotia folk artist Maud Lewis is referred to as a “natural primitive” for her unschooled paintings of bucolic country scenes.
It’s an art-world term, along with its variant “naive art,” but neither sits well with Sally Hawkins, the Oscar-nominated British actress (for “Blue Jasmine”) who brings the late Lewis majestically to life in Irish director Aisling Walsh’s new film Maudie, now playing at Toronto’s Varsity Cinemas.
Hawkins stars opposite Ethan Hawke, who plays Lewis’s fishmonger husband Everett, in the movie that was filmed in Canada, with Newfoundland standing in for Nova Scotia.
“People call it ‘naive art,’ but there’s no such thing, I think,” Hawkins says from London.
“Maud’s art is far from naive. It just has a childlike innocence, which is actually highly sophisticated. Her composition is highly sophisticated, and so is the way she uses colour and landscapes and things from her imagination. Things she’s seeing in the everyday world around her: children playing in the street, oxen in the field and also Everett, who’s on the boat. It’s just beautiful.”
That Star Weekly article, by the way, described Lewis, then 62, as “Canada’s Grandma Moses” under the banner headline “The Little Old Lady Who Paints Pretty Pictures.”
They were different times, to say the least, but Hawkins is delighted to be able to help celebrate the life story and artistry of Lewis, who died in 1970. This interview has been edited and condensed.
You bring great passion to the role of Maud Lewis. You really wanted to play her, didn’t you?
Incredibly so! I fell in love with her work. It was the reason why I wanted to do it, really, even before I read the script. I’ve known Aisling for years (they made the BBC crime series “Fingersmith” together), and we’ve kept in contact and remained good friends. She rang me saying that she had been sent the script, was interested in doing it and thought of me, which was flattering, and then sent me a few pictures of Maudie. What was your reaction to the photos? There’s one of Maudie, later on in her life, when she is incredibly debilitated with her arthritis, holding this paintbrush and surrounded by her artwork and sitting by her window. She has this incredible smile. I also saw some of her paintings. And as soon as I saw those pictures and paintings, I knew I wanted to do the film. I can paint myself, but this made me want to start back at the beginning and try to paint like her.
How would you describe Maud Lewis’s art?
I just find it stunning. The more you look at it, the more that comes through. And when I started to paint like her paintings, I just loved doing that and I got so much from it. There’s this beautiful humour that comes out of her work and this lovely sense of joy. You can feel how much she loved working and how much she loved art.
Ethan Hawke is a great actor, as well as a very nice guy, but his Everett comes across as a real brute.
I know, but it was not out of the norm for the day. And I think Maudie, in our film anyway, saw that he was just in pain, I think, rather than cruel or malicious. It was somebody who was in a similar amount of emotional pain to Maud and it was being expressed in that kind of vicious way. But there was certainly a softer side to Everett.
You bring across very well Maud’s ability to overcome her serious physical ailments — arthritis and emphysema — as well as her extreme poverty and isolation.
Thank you! I love what I do and I feel honoured to do what I do, bringing people to life. It’s a real gift for me. It is hard work and you just want to sort of throw yourself into it each and every time. To do anything less than that feels like a disservice to the people you’re playing, to the audience and to yourself. Especially when you’re representing somebody who existed in real life and is such an icon and is such a genius. I felt blessed.