Emily Carr

Emily Carr

Emily Carr began serious study of art in her late teens after leaving home in Victoria, British Columbia to attend the California School of Design in San Francisco. Returning for a brief time, Carr soon left Victoria again to attend the Westminster School of Art and study in the studios of a number of British artists. But, it was her year in France between 1910 and 1911 studying Post-Impressionist art that Carr found most inspiring.

In 1911, She returned to Vancouver with a commitment to document the First Nations cultures of British Columbia, a project she began in 1907, and produced a great number of watercolours and corresponding canvases in her new French style. These works met with mixed reception until 1927, when her paintings were included in the National Gallery’s Exhibition of Canadian West Coast Art Native and Modern, where they were embraced by members of the famed Canadian painters, the Group of Seven.

She returned to British Columbia to begin the most productive period of her career, venturing out into remote parts of coastal British Columbia and creating the inspired, powerful canvases for which she is best known.

“Real success must be this, to feel down in your own soul that the thing you have striven for has been accomplished. To this must be added the appreciation of the thing done by those you love and whose appreciation you value" Emily Carr

"I wanted to draw a dog. I sat beside Carlow’s kennel and stared at him for a long time. Then I took a charred stick from the grate, spilt open a large brown-paper sack and drew a dog on the sack. My married sister who had taken drawing lessons looked at my dog and said, "Not bad." Father spread the drawing on top of his newspaper, put on his spectacles, looked, said, "Um!" Mother said, "You are blacked with charred wood, wash!" The paper sack was found years later among Father’s papers. He had written on it, 'By Emily, aged eight.'"

Carr, Emily. Growing Pains