Emily Carr was born in Victoria, British Columbia on December 13, 1871 and past away on March 2, 1945. Her rebellious nature dominated her attitude from a young age, and likely helped shape her independence.
She lived most of her life on Vancouver Island but did live in San Francisco for three years, five years in England and one year in France. Each of these experiences had a profound effect on her development.
She moved to San Francisco because of the lack of art schools, art collections and professional artists in the Victoria area that she could learn from. Eventually a lack of finances forced her to return. After the California School of Design in San Francisco, she returned to Victoria to teach art classes to children. In 1899, Carr took up studies at the Westminster School of Art in London. And also attended sketching classes in Cornwall. In 1910, she enrolled in the Academie Colarossi in Paris. It was here that she would break away from her more traditional teachings. Unfortunately, her work was not received well when she returned to Vancouver. British Columbians were unwilling to deviate from the English landscape tradition.
In 1913, Carr needed to supplement her income by raising livestock, growing vegetables and making pottery. But by 1927, she was invited to Ottawa for an exhibition and met
Lawren Harris, who had a profound effect on her and her work. The confidence and encouragement shown by the
Group of Seven rekindled her spirit and motivated her to return to painting.
The two driving themes of her work were the unique and vanishing Native culture and a powerful coastal nature. Her first trip to Native villages was in 1898. Between her fifty-sixth and seventy-first years, her paintings of dark forests, Native carvings, trees, wild storms and infinite skies reflected her Pacific Coast experience. Earlier in her life, she went through a number of other phases. During one phase in her career, she painted in a French
postimpressionist and
Fauve School manner and in another showed links to
Cubism. Her work suggested connections to
van Gogh and
German Expressionism.
Emily Carr, Totem Forest, (c. 1930), oil, 128.6 x 92 cm, Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, BC.
The sketching of totem poles, which were often found in remote locations subject to harsh weather conditions, is seen in many of her paintings. However, by 1931 she left the Native theme. Her change of focus was likely due to
Lawren Harris and
Mark Tobey, who both advised her to create art from within herself. For Carr, she had intuitively grasped the Native's relationship to the natural and spiritual world and his environment. By gaining this understanding, she decided to move on to new challenges.
Emily Carr, Scorned as Timber, Beloved of the Sky (1935), oil, 112 x 68.9 cm, Vancouver Art Gallery, Vancouver, BC.
A chronological history of paintings is difficult, since she stopped dating her paintings after 1930. Historians are left to evaluate the style or geographic location and attempt to correlate it with a year.
The 1930's saw a rebirth of both her writing and painting. But by 1937, her confinement to bed limited her painting activities.
From a prim and proper orthodox religious household, she asserted her rebellious nature early in life. She often escaped the rules and rigidity of her childhood household to explore nature.
Encouragement from
the Group of Seven, in the late 1920's, was important in her return to painting after several unproductive years. While there are similarities in style with
the Group of Seven, Emily Carr was very individualistic and departed from the techniques of
the Group of Seven by never using the oil field sketch. Instead she devised a unique process of oil paint used with gasoline. Her innovative ideas in 1932 were out of necessity, according to. Conventional artist's materials were expensive. Instead she used ordinary white house paint and cheap manila paper, which she bought in bulk and was easy to carry.
Emily Carr Totem Poles, Kitseukla, 1912 oil on canvas
She had ill health through much of her life. While in France in 1910, she had several intervals of poor health. In 1902, she became seriously ill and was in the East Anglia sanatorium in Suffolk between 1903-4. In 1937, she had her first heart attack, which was followed by another in 1939, a stroke in 1940, and another heart attack in 1942. In 1945, she had her final and fatal heart attack.
In her latter years, Emily Carr stated: "Spring was young, I over seventy. With Spring all about me I sat sketching in the clearing … Seventy years had maimed me, loggers had maimed the clearing … but I got immense delight in just being there, in the quiet wood, the longing was too terrific to subdue, and I felt better."
Carr as a very complex person, who was both brave and spiritual, and yet overweight, irritable and socially insecure. Simply, we need to recognize that Carr was imperfect and struggled and except it.
In conclusion, Emily Carr grew out of a very strict upbringing with a defiant and rebellious nature that would shape her work throughout her life. Her fascination with the Pacific Coast and the spirituality of Native peoples was a profound influence on her work during certain phases of her career. She traveled abroad in order to hone her painting skills but still returned to British Columbia.
The
Group of Seven were certainly a profound influence on her work and life, although she still remained individualistic. While her styles changed over time, she managed to create work that will be remembered and cherished by people for many years to come.
Emily Carr The Red Cedar, c1931-33 oil on canvas
Later,
Kenaz
A controversial exhibit of human corpses opened at a museum in Tampa, Fla., Thursday, according to Local 6 News.
The "Bodies: The Exhibition" show includes human bodies and body parts preserved with a process that replaces human tissue with silicone rubber.
The Museum of Science and Industry in Tampa opened the exhibit even though the state anatomical board said the museum failed to get permission for exhibit and does not have consent forms for those whose bodies are on display.
The dissected and preserved corpses belonged to Chinese people and went unclaimed or unidentified before being turned over to a medical school in China, according to the exhibit's owner, Premier Exhibitions of Atlanta.
