Boats Birds and Houses Maud Lewis

Maud Lewis was from Nova Scotia, she gained notoriety for painting folksy local scenes and selling them for peanuts. Nowadays the paintings are worth a lot more than peanuts, although there are a lot of fakes because her style is relatively easy to copy. At first glance a Maud Lewis painting looks as if a child did it, but upon closer inspection she painted with precision and a keen eye for composition. Its likely that most of her paintings were from memory since she was confined to her house for most of her life. Joyful motifs appear such as boats, horse-drawn wagons, snow, animals, flowers, colourful houses and boats. Today I sat in front of the computer and made a watercolour imitation of a Maud Lewis painting which you see above. I was impressed with how much detail there was, for example the boat in the distance had a trail of waves behind it, and the trees were very textured. Most of all, I appreciated the control of colour and value. Black next to red, dark brown next to yellow, and dark green next to chartreuse. She completely avoided shadows, which creates an ethereal glow akin to a Van Gogh painting. Using watercolours added to the challenge since I had to leave the bright white, yellow, orange and chartreuse areas free so as to maintain the lightness and chroma. In one spot I painted the red tree over the blue water (just above the yellow house on the left) and it went dark. Her formula seems to be high chroma, strong value contrast, tight composition, and joyful motifs. Maybe I will try to use this technique next time I am on location but unfortunately it is raining all weekend. 

Boats Birds and Houses Maud Lewis, watercolour 8 x 10" cold press, October 2023 (No. 3616b)