HALIFAX -- A Nova Scotia icon will be celebrated on this year’s Canada Post line of holiday stamps.
On Monday, Canada Post unveiled three new holiday stamps featuring the festive paintings of Nova Scotia folk artist Maud Lewis.
The stamps feature three of Lewis’s seasonal paintings, all from the Collection of the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia: Family and Sled, circa 1960s; Winter Sleigh Ride, circa early 1960s; and Team of Oxen in Winter, 1967.
"Maud Lewis is now considered one of Canada’s best known and most beloved folk artists,” explains a statement from Canada Post. “Despite the odds against her, Maud’s desire to reveal the wonder of the everyday world and the simple yet joyous beauty of rural Nova Scotia burned like a flame that simply refused to be snuffed — and continues to live on in her vividly coloured, exuberant works.”
Lewis was born Maud Kathleen Dowley to John and Agnes Dowley in the town of Yarmouth, N.S., on March 7, 1903. Maud lived with her husband Everett Lewis in a small house in Marshalltown, N.S, and drew inspiration from the rural farms, fields and shorelines near her home.
“I paint all from memory, I don’t copy much,” Lewis once explained before her death. “Because I don’t go nowhere, I just make my own designs up.”
She spent most of her life in pain from arthritis that left her hands and body deformed, but continued to paint her art. Her masterwork became her colourfully painted home, which is now displayed at the Nova Scotia Art Gallery.
Lewis died in 1970.
Lewis’s collection at the Nova Scotia Art Gallery attracts thousands of visitors a year. In 2016, her story became even more widely known with the release of the film "Maudie."
The stamps are now available on Canada Post’s website and in stores.
