Maud Lewis : A World Without Shadows

Maud Lewis drew on her happiest memories to paint delightful pictures of her world. Despite being stricken with physical disabilities from an early age, the celebrated Nova Scotia folk artist found joy in painting scenes of country life on canvases, greeting cards and on the very walls of her tiny one-room home. In I Can Make Art Like Maud Lewis, a group of Grade 6 students is inspired by her incredible life and work. With the help of folk artist Kyle Jackson, they create a folk art painting of their own downtown neighbourhood. Informative, deeply touching and filled with the magic of creation, I Can Make Art Like Maud Lewis shows both the power and simple pleasure of folk art. I Can Make Art is a series of six short films that take a kids'-eye view on a diverse group of Canadian visual artists.

Miyuki Tanobe is a Japanese painter who has chosen to make Québec her home. She works in the Nihonga style, applying centuries-old techniques to scenes drawn directly from the working-class neighbourhoods of Montréal. The film records the progression of one of her paintings from a preliminary sketch to its completion, showing how thoroughly she has grasped the essence of her new homeland. Tanobe portrays Montréal and Québec life in a lively and perceptive fashion.

From his colourful canvases, William Kurelek paints a vivid history of his father, who left the Ukraine after World War I to begin a life of farming in Canada. There are scenes of village life in the Ukraine, then the early days of struggle on an Alberta homestead, and the growing comfort, confidence and family. The narrator tells the story as Kurelek remembers it and his paintings record it - harvest time, weddings, the move to Manitoba and scenes from prairie life in the '20s and '30s. The story concludes with the move down east where his father had planned to retire, but finding idleness irksome, he bought a small farm. Here in Ontario, Kurelek paints another landscape with the same pleasure he painted the old.