A pricey painting, once traded for grilled cheese, hits auction | London Free Press

Article content “They would support us and we would support them any way we can.” The Lewis painting hung in their son’s bedroom throughout his childhood, Demas said. Now that their children are grown, the Demas family felt it was time to unload some of the art they’ve collected over the years and use the money for other things. The Kinnear-Lewis letters and the painting are being auctioned separately by Miller and Miller Auctions in New Hamburg on May 14. And with the recent popularity of Lewis’s work, with some fetching more than $20,000 at auction, the painting is expected to sell for more than a bunch of grilled cheese sandwiches this time around. “Like so many folk artists, it’s truly the story of the artist that drives the demand for the art,” said auctioneer Ethan Miller. “It’s very unusual to see a category that has risen in value as quickly as Maud has. I think it’s the perfect storm of factors. There’s so much in the world that makes us want to pay attention to the situation that Maud Lewis was in and what she did to overcome adversity.” Lewis – who was born with birth defects and had severe arthritis affecting her fingers – painted for decades but became famous in the ’60s, largely due to a Star Weekly magazine article about her, said Alan Deacon, an expert on Lewis’s work who met her three times and bought some of her work back then. Her work has risen in popularity in the last decade, after Maudie – a biopic movie starring Sally Hawkins and Ethan Hawke – and recent exhibitions of her art, Deacon said.