Emily Carr 1871-1945
Shoreline
oil on canvas, 68.0 x 111.5 cm "A picture equals a movement in space. Pictures have swerved too much towards design and decoration... The idea must run through the whole, the story that arrested you and urged the desire to express it, the story that God told you through that combination of growth. The picture side of the thing aids the relationship of the objects to each other in one concerted movement, so that the whole gets up and goes, lifting the looker with it, sky , sea, trees affecting each other... One must ascertain first whether your subject is a slow lolling one or smooth flowing and serene, or quick and jerky, or heavy and ponderous." (1)
Emily Carr was a remarkable West Coast painter and is, perhaps, Canada's best known woman artist. Not only a painter and a writer, she also kept a small rooming house in Victoria, British Columbia. In her search for just the right scenes to depict the rich culture of the Northwest Coast indigenous people and the dense forest of the West Coast, Carr travelled to remote regions of British Columbia.
Born in Victoria, British Columbia in 1871, Carr first studied art in San Francisco, California and then in Europe, in London and Paris. When she exhibited some of her paintings in Vancouver, inspired by her experience in France, the exhibition brought little success. Disillusioned and discouraged, Carr supported herself by being a landlady. | |
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