On Maud and her neighbours... the inmates, and funerals..and signs...and golf. :)

"The painting "Maud's Funeral, Inmates Return" is purely fictional on my part. I apologize in advance for upsetting the factualists out there. But paintings come from the nether world of dreams as much as the harsh cold light of reality. And so this one conforms to the former. The premise that a band of poor, destitute, mentally ill, physically neglected men, marginalized by the modernist steam roller, would organize and pay their respects to a female folk painter buried in a child's coffin, eight years or so after their primary residence was closed down, and after they were probably dispersed to other institutions, certainly didn't happen - at least not to my knowledge."

"However, these men did have voices, and like actors in a play they vicariously convey something about their own condition and the memory of a woman with Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis, who painted simple bucolic scenes of Nova Scotian hills and ports, tulips and bluebirds, and cars stopped in the road by oxen. It was the least they could do, after all Maud Lewis graced their world when there might not have been a lot to celebrate. Maud was their next door neighbour, a rural legend in the making. Her paintings were the talk of the region. Some may have even hung in their house - a poor house gallery that upon closure probably supplied a lot of wall board for Maud to continue painting until her death." - Steven Rhude

http://srhude.blogspot.ca/2018/03/mauds-funeralinmates-return-in-progress.html