The Illuminated Life of Maud Lewis is a heart-warming companion to a new exhibit, scheduled to tour nationally, illustrating the life and art work of Nova Scotia’s most loved native painter. Everything about Maud Lewis is endearing, from her cacophonous, colourful pictures of landscapes, tulips, blackbirds, kittens, and oxen painted with leftover boat paint, to the tiny cracker-box cottage in Digby County where she worked and lived with her husband Everett. Petite, shy, and crumpled physically by birth defects and rheumatoid arthritis, the late Maud Lewis is now as famous as Maritime lobster, and the cottage she covered in bright designs has become a major concern for preservationists. Halifax author Lance Woolaver gives a rich and personal account of Lewis’s economically impoverished but visually rich life, and photographs by Bob Brooks show Lewis as an artist whose spirit far exceeded all physical obstacles.