Kirjahaku

MAUD LEWIS "World Without Shadows" is the original stage play written about the famous Nova Scotia, Canada folk artist. It was first broadcast as a radio play via CBC Radio to Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, and then via a national Canadian CBC broadcast, in 1996. Subsequent productions have included King's Theatre of Annapolis Royal, Ship's Company Theatre of Parrsboro, Festival Antigonish, Neptune Theatre of Halifax, Nova Scotia and the Blythe Festival of Blythe, Ontario. Scenes from the play were included in the National Film Board of Canada feature documentary film "The Illuminated Life of Maud Lewis," as written by Lance Woolaver, and featured actors from the King's Theatre of Annapolis Royal production. The characters include Maud's husband of record, Everett Lewis, and Maud's good friends and neighbours of Digby County. All characters are taken from life. The Canadian actor, Niki Lipman, would describe the role of "Maud" as "the role of a lifetime." "World Without Shadows" is dedicated to Thornton Wilder, with whom the playwright visited in Connecticut in 1968. "World Without Shadows borrows its structure from "Our Town": it takes place in our time signatures, the perfect and imperfect past. Like "Our Town," "Shadows" is as much a play about a village as it is a play about lives. Characters are presented as both ghosts and living beings. As the characters come and go, Maud's bright paintings spark revelations of their lives.

Maud Lewis (1903-1970) was recognized and revered in her own lifetime. She offered her endearing images to the passing world through her roadside sign, "Paintings for Sale," and was rewarded by the enthusiastic response she received from both the community and tourists as well as from art collectors. The Illuminated Life of Maud Lewis is an invitation to share once again with the world the perceptions of this celebrated Nova Scotia folk artist in prose, photographs, and reproductions of her works.

Maud Lewis has become one of Canada’s favourite folk artists, and her buoyant winter pictures of nature, pets, farm animals, and people at work and play are among her most charming. Her hands were twisted with arthritis, but Maud earned her living by painting Christmas cards and pictures and selling them from her tiny, gaily painted one-room house beside the highway near Digby, Nova Scotia. Originally issued in 1997 and now available in this updated edition, Christmas with Maud Lewis paints a portrait of how this spirited woman celebrated the season in her life and art. Maud’s vision of Christmas embraces skaters sliding every which way, passengers leaning over the box of a horse-drawn sleigh, smiling oxen in their best harness, and bluebirds beside their snow-covered house. The paintings in Christmas with Maud Lewis are from the large collection of the Woolaver family.