For the trailer of Maudie, click here.
If one ever questions what it takes for human expression to be considered art, Aisling Walsh’s Maudie (2016) can serve as a compelling site for exploring the intricacies of this question. The biopic captures the adult life of Canadian folk artist Maud Lewis (1903–1970) in a distinctive manner, portraying the struggles of a disabled artist in the harsh environment of rural Nova Scotia several decades ago. However, her artworks—the concept of which will be examined in a later section—provide a striking contrast to this confining environment, whether appreciated or dismissed depending on one’s understanding of what constitutes art. In this sense, Walsh’s Maudie invites viewers to reflect on the nature of art, the conditions of its recognition, and the broader implications such recognition entails.
Walsh does not shy away from depicting the artist’s work; rather, she grants it significant visual and narrative prominence, instead of allowing Sally Hawkins (Maud) and Ethan Hawke (Everett) to dominate the frame entirely. Indeed, the director frequently conceals the artist and other figures holding her canvases by focusing on their hands, visually merging them with the environment through costume color, low exposure, and natural lighting.
Figure 1: Maud's (Sally Hawkins) painting process
Figure 2: One of Maud's artworks
This concealment can be understood as revealing rather than obscuring. The emphasis on close-ups of Maud’s hands concretizes the idea that perception is not solely visual but an embodied process, demonstrating how seeing and doing are inseparable. Maud’s artistic expression thus emerges as an extension of bodily movement rather than a purely representational act. Hence, the viewer is confronted with a philosophical question: can this be considered art? Drawing on conventional knowledge of Western artistic traditions—from Classicism to Contemporary Art—one might expect composition, depth, and illusionistic realism to define artistic value. While different movements vary in their application of these principles, they rarely abandon them altogether in the way Maud’s work appears to do. Maud isolates elements of the world as they present themselves to her perception: clear, repetitive, and immediate. As a result, the viewer falls heir to the specific way she perceives the world as a series of tactile impressions rather than a complex, illusionistic landscape. Yet, this observation does not fully resolve the question of artistic value; rather, it exposes the limitations of rigid aesthetic frameworks. Although this analysis does not claim to provide a definitive answer, it can be asserted that Maudie challenges traditional art didactics by foregrounding art as an innate, embodied form of perception rather than a product of technical mastery or formal training.
This perspective is reinforced in the scene where Sandra (Kari Matchett) asks Maud to teach her how to paint. Maud responds, “No one can teach that,” adding that “the whole of life is already framed.” Sandra’s inability to identify what inspires her suggests a lack of the embodied perception necessary for artistic creation, despite her background in a culturally rich environment: New York in this case. By contrast, Maud’s work reflects a distinctly corporeal mode of perception, a rather simple corpo-visual framing of the world, which may be understood, from a phenomenological standpoint, in relation to her disability. According to Maurice Merleau-Ponty, the body is the “very movement of expression” and the primary medium of acquiring the world (147). Maud’s rheumatoid arthritis—her “crooked” body in her simple terms—thus becomes not a limitation but the very medium of her expression. Her restricted mobility and persistent pain narrow her engagement with real space, directing her attention toward familiar and repetitive elements—local fauna, domestic interiors, and simple landscapes—which she renders through in simple brush strokes and bold colors.
Beyond interrogating the nature of art, the film also explores the capacity to recognize it. This question is approached through a gendered contrast, suggesting that female characters are more receptive to Maud’s artistic expression than their male counterparts. Aunt Ida (Gabrielle Rose), for instance, implicitly acknowledges the value of Maud’s work by tolerating her painting, even when it risks damaging property: she reprimands Maud for the mess she might cause on her porch after Charles (Zachary Bennett) leaves the house rather than mocking and prohibiting her from painting. The opening shot underlines this compliance as Maud is shown painting on her room’s walls and, given her aunt’s disposition throughout the film, one might not expect her to allow Maud to paint her room’s walls as she pleases, yet the viewer sees more than a passing doodle above the bed’s headboard.
Figure 3: Maud painting her room's walls
Similarly, Sandra recognizes one of Maud’s chicken painting on the walls upon visiting Everett’s cottage, and her appreciation ultimately helps the artist’s broader recognition, extending even to the White House.
Figure 4: Maud's chicken painting
Male characters, by contrast, largely fail to perceive Maud’s work as art. The shopkeeper of The Short Life’s Shop dismisses it as inferior to children’s drawings, while Charles’ acknowledgment is purely financially motivated. Everett presents a more nuanced position: when Maud asks for his opinion concerning her paintings, he responds that him not being a woman hinders him from understanding her art and consequently attributing to it any artistic value in a feminine sense—which he has no access to—as its masculine counterpart is devoid of such perception. Even lay audiences will understand that the response of this illiterate person carries depth rather than malintent. In short, he suggests that his inability to understand Maud’s art stems from a fundamental difference in perception between men and women. This claim implies a deeper epistemological divide, wherein artistic meaning is not universally accessible but shaped by embodied and gendered experience. Within the film’s logic, Everett’s remark gestures toward a more complex claim: that the ability to perceive, interpret, and assign value to art is not universal, but conditioned by one’s lived, embodied experience. Gender becomes significant in my proposed epistemological reading because the film subtly aligns certain forms of perception—particularly those associated with care, attentiveness, and emotional receptivity—with its female characters. The social and experiential positioning allows them to appeal to forms of expression that fall outside dominant (often masculinized) artistic criteria such as technical mastery or formal training. In this light, Everett’s statement is less a definitive claim about inherent gender differences and more an intuitive recognition of the limits of his own perceptual framework. It underscores the film’s larger argument that artistic meaning does not reside solely in the object itself, but emerges in the encounter between artwork and viewer—an encounter always shaped by embodied and socially situated perspectives.
In addition to these thematic concerns, Maudie can be read as a self-reflexive work. The film is less a biography of Maud Lewis than an exploration of her art as an extension of her being. Although biographical accounts such as Lance Woolaver’s works, namely The Illuminated Life of Maud Lewis (1996) or his Maud Lewis: The Heart on the Door (2016), provide a more comprehensive narrative of Lewis’ life, Walsh’s film deliberately departs from strict biographical fidelity. This departure underscores the primacy of artistic representation over factual completeness. Furthermore, the film’s relatively short duration—compared to traditional biopics—signals a shift from life narrative to artistic meditation. In this sense, Maudie becomes an artwork about art itself, generating a meta-discursive structure in which cinematic form mirrors the embodied creativity it depicts. The film thus transcends generic conventions, constructing an alternative narrative logic in which art and life are inseparable.
Despite its philosophical depth, Maudie also invites more lighthearted, personal, and affective responses. The relationship between Maud and Everett, for instance, may unsettle contemporary viewers, whose expectations of intimacy differ significantly from those of earlier historical periods. Ethan Hawke’s The BUILD Series interview (2017) confirms this by stating that “people are used to the plastic version of love and intimacy that they are appalled by romance in real life.” The film, indeed, presents a more complex and often uncomfortable dynamic. As a contemporary viewer, one may find Everett’s behavior troubling, even when contextualized historically. While I fully acknowledge that their relationship is typical of the 1940s-1970s period, this historical fact does not justify Everett’s harshness towards Maud nor does it render me an apologist of the romantic standards during those times. Projecting contemporary relationship dynamics back in time would be a directorial attempt of historical and biographical concealment. The latter still can be traced in the film’s unfaithfulness to the source, which has changed my perception of Maud Lewis’s character.
Finally, the film’s soundtrack, composed by Michael Timmins, a member of the band Cowboy Junkies, complements its visual and thematic minimalism created by Aisling Walsh. The twenty-one songs on the soundtrack—characterized by sparse instrumentation featuring acoustic guitar with several electric guitar and lap steel interventions alongside a few melodic piano notes—mirrors Maud’s minimalist and naïve artistic style. This sonic restraint reinforces the film’s focus on simplicity and immediacy as the shared ground of auditory and visual aesthetics.
In conclusion, Walsh crafts a nuanced and thought-provoking portrait of Maud Lewis by foregrounding her art rather than her biography. The film opens up complex questions about aesthetics, perception, and embodiment, while maintaining narrative coherence through its focus on interpersonal relationships and sensory experience.
Works cited
“Ethan Hawke, Sally Hawkins and Aisling Walsh Speak On Their Film “Maudie”.” Youtube, uploaded by BUILD Series, v=zlWQfKtjYX4&t=1s .7 June 2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Maudie. Directed by Aisling Walsh, performance by Sally Hawkins, Rink Rat Productions, 2016.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Phenomenology of Perception. 1st ed., Routledge, 2010.
Woolaver, Lance. Ma ud Lewis: The Heart on the Door. Spencer Books, 2016.
Woolaver, Lance. The Illuminated Life of Ma ud Lewis. Nimbus Pub, 1996.