Good evening and welcome! In two previous diaries, I introduced you to the art of "The Group of Seven" and Tom Thomson. Tonight I would like to tell you about another Canadian icon, Emily Carr.
Emily Carr was born on Dec 13, 1871 in Victoria, British Columbia and died there on March 2, 1945.
Carr’s parents were British immigrants and her father was a successful merchant. She described herself as "contrary from the start". She was a naughty child, and a rebellious young girl, who scorned the proper Victorian society in which she lived. She was a very eccentric person, who dressed oddly and kept a monkey as a pet. Once, while teaching art to young ladies, she was fired after just one month for smoking and cussing in class!
Carr became interested in Aboriginal peoples, their culture, houses, totem poles, and masks. She decided to make a visual record of their art, believing that this culture was dying out and wanting to record it before it disappeared forever. She made many trips to the remote Queen Charlotte Islands and the Skeena River, where she lived and painted among the Haida, Gitksan and Tsimshian. She also painted the distinctive landscape of west coast Canada, including rainforests and seascapes. She felt close to the native people who accepted her into their homes and lives. Their separation from the dominant society was much like her own isolation from her strict, Victorian world. A small community on Vancouver Island gave her the name Klee Wyck which means "Laughing One".
Sadly, she was not able to make a living from her art and purchased an apartment house that she managed for many years to support herself as well as raising dogs.
But then when Emily was already 57 years old, an ethnologist studying in British Columbia noticed her paintings and brought them to the curators at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa who invited her to participate in an exhibition. There she met Lawren Harris and other members of the Group of Seven, who welcomed her into their company. Their paintings of the rugged landscape of northern Canada impressed her greatly, and gave her the motivation to return to painting.
"Their works call to my very soul," she wrote. "They are big and courageous. I know they are building an art worthy of our great country, and I want to have my share, to put in a little spoke for the West, one woman holding up my end."
She did more than hold up her end. She went on to become one of Canada's most famous and beloved artists.
Like many artists of the time, Carr embraced a new vision of God as nature. She led a spiritual way of life, rejecting the Church and found her soul and greater spirit in the Canadian wilderness.
Her love of her country shines through her work. She expressed it this way:
"It is wonderful to feel the grandness of Canada in the raw, not because she is Canada but because she's something sublime that you were born into, some great rugged power that you are a part of.”
I hope you have enjoyed the story of Emily Carr. There are many images of her and her work here:
https://www.google.ca/...
This video shows many paintings and is set to a song written about her:
And now, I invite you to share your thoughts and feelings about anything that is on your mind this evening.
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