Christmas with Maud Lewis is a brilliant gift book featuring works by Maud Lewis, Nova Scotia's most famous folk painter, and text by Lance Woolaver, her foremost interpreter. From 1938 until she died in 1970, Maud Lewis and her husband Everett lived in poverty in a one-room house near Digby, Nova Scotia. Her hands twisted by rheumatoid arthritis, Maud earned her living by painting buoyant pictures of nature, pets, farm animals, people, and scenery. In Christmas with Maud Lewis, Lance Woolaver describes how this spirited woman celebrated Christmas in her life and art. For about 15 years, Maud painted Christmas cards in watercolours, and throughout her career she delighted in making oil paintings of all kinds of Christmas and winter scenes. Her 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 building a nest in their snow-covered house. The 100 images in Christmas with Maud Lewis are all from the Woolaver family collection, including a painting of baby Max in his cradle beside the Christmas tree and another of little Pearl collecting gaily wrapped presents from the mailbox. Many of these images have never before appeared in print.

In addition to his plays The Poor Farm and World Without Shadows, Lance Woolaver has published a number of fiction and non-fiction books for both adults and children, most notably The Illuminated Life Of Maud Lewis. He has won the Dartmouth Book Award, the Telefilm Canada Cross-over Award, and the Atlantic Bookseller's Award. Born in Digby, Nova Scotia, Woolaver now lives and writes in Halifax.

Lance Woolaver's profile page

Bob Brooks (1927-1999) was one of Canada’s finest photojournalists. His work appeared in Time Life, the Star Weekly, Sports Illustrated, Newsweek, McCall's, Harper's, Maclean's, Chatelaine, the London Times, Paris Match and National Geographic. His radiant photos of Maud, first published in the Star Weekly article that changed her life, reflect Maud’s joyous optimism.

Bob Brooks' profile page