Catalogue info: The house is now on permanent loan to the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia following acquisition by the Province of Nova Scotia for the Heritage collection. Free-hand door, inside front door circa 1938 by Maud(e) Lewis. Oil on wood. Conservation Treatment: Art Gallery of Nova Scotia Maud(e) Dowley was born in Ohio, Yarmouth County, in 1903 where her father was a harness maker. As a child she was severely crippled by polio. She married Everett Lewis in the late 1930s and they loved in the tiny one-and-a-half-storey house in Marshalltown. Maud(e) began painting Christmas cards and cookie tins. She also painted any available surface in the small house. She had never had an art lesson and painted the world as she wanted it to be. As one owner of her work said: "Maud(e) paints what we dream about."