ARTIST ON THE EDGE

She weathered wicked storms, battled blackflies and mosquitoes, walked for miles and rode her faithful horse in all the elements. She suffered health issues, fear and loneliness. She was ridiculed and criticized, often shunned and ostracized for her appearance, her mannerisms and her contemporary perspectives. She was alone in her physical world, alone in her ideologies, and alone in her geographic configuration. Isolated from fellow artists and artistic influences, with her own ideas and persona, exploring the furthest western shores, Emily Carr was truly ahead of her time.

By Debbie MacRae

OPPOSITE PAGE: In her late 20s, Emily Carr began to travel on her horse with her companions, her monkey, and dog, to the First Nations villages on the Canadian West Coast, painting its people and nature. THIS PAGE:- Kitwancool, by Emily Carr 1928.

Richard Carr was a migrant worker, working as a deck hand, boatswain, ice fisherman, and crop harvester. Educated only at an elementary level, he drifted from his origins in England to the perimeters of Switzerland, Poland, Panama and South America. He traversed the landscapes of Mexico on horseback, where he tried his hand at photography multiple times before relinquishing it to the more adventurous pursuit of the gold in California and the Cariboo.

Emily Saunders, was born illegitimately and travelled to California at 18, remaining in the care of a boarding house matron until she met Carr at the age of 18. They were married in 1855 at Ensham Church, England. Saunders would give birth to five daughters and four sons, of whom only one son would survive to adulthood.

Daughter, Emily Carr was named after her mother, and although there was some physical resemblance, her contrary nature and strongwilled character contradicted the prim, proper upbringing imparted by her parents. She would pride herself on being the “disturbing element of the family.” As the youngest, she demanded a lot of attention, and in her younger years, was admittedly her father’s favourite.

It was a drawing of her father’s dog, that first brought her talent to his attention. She was only eight-years-old, and he was immensely impressed with her talent. He arranged her first art lessons. Her father would die before he could know that those lessons, intended to be a “ladylike pastime,” would launch the career of one of Canada’s most iconic painters – the “Mother of Modern Arts.”

Restraints

Emily’s childhood was rigid and fettered by rules. In an effort to escape, she would often abscond into the woods on an old circus pony who took her to another world. She loved the outdoors. She mourned the early death of her mother from tuberculosis. Her father died two years later, leaving her in the stern, and often abusive, care of her elder sister.

Emily’s desire was to travel abroad to study art, but her overbearing sister would have nothing of it. She pleaded on deaf ears. Ultimately, she focused her sights on the family trustee persuading him to allow her to study in San Francisco, with fewer miles and less cost to the family coffers.

However, after three years of study, Emily returned home, as uninspired as the still life representations she depicted. With dwindling finances and loss of motivation, Emily returned to Victoria, only to find her family home converted to a YWCA and children’s Sunday school.

Seeking escape and inspiration once again, Emily commenced art instruction for neighborhood children to provide funding for travel to Europe. She converted the loft in the cow barn into a studio, later recalling that history fondly in her memoirs, Growing Pains, “No studio has ever been so dear to me as that old loft smelling of hay and apples…”

The spring of 1899 brought with it an invita- tion to visit the west coast village of Ucluelet, a Nuu-Chah-Nulth reserve on Vancouver Island. During that visit Emily would first encounter the Indigenous peoples who were to become her lifelong intrigue. Although she did not understand the language, she communicated with patience, gestures, and smiles. They called her “the laughing one” – Klee Wyck, a name she would later employ for her first collection of short stories.

Return

On the return to Victoria, she inspired a suitor who fell madly in love with her. The emotion unreciprocated, she traveled to England, hoping to avoid his amorous intent. He followed, begging her hand in marriage. She would decline his attentions and declare her lifelong dedication to herself and her art, refusing to submit to the Victorian ideologies that ladies were destined only for marriage and motherhood –a sacrifice she was not prepared to make. She would keep that pledge for the rest of her days.

Emily embarked on her artistic training in England, only to realize that the confines of London, with its crowded streets and smoggy air, was “unbearable.” She turned to the southern coast, painting land and seascapes, while her health declined with acute anaemia. Hospitalized, demoralized, and her resources again depleted, she returned to Canada, after losing almost two years of health and work, much of which she would eventually destroy.

On her way home, she made a stop in the Cariboo to visit friends – a stopover that greatly enhanced the value of her health and her freedom. Riding horses daily, and roaming the ranch in the fresh air, Emily regenerated her body and her bond with her environment, revitalizing her passion for her Canadian homeland.

Ironically, when she returned to Victoria, she received some exaggerated press about her studies “under the English Masters.” She was offered part-time work as a political cartoonist, and another facet of her incorrigible personality emerged.

Resistance

She was, however, still very much her own person. “My sister owned a beautiful mare which she permitted me to ride. On the mare, astride as I had ridden in the Cariboo, my sheep-dog following, I went into the woods. No woman had ever ridden cross-saddle before in Victoria! Victoria was shocked!” - Excerpt from Growing Pains

She was invited to teach at the Vancouver Studio Club, but the attendees were not as dedicated as she thought they should be, and her tenure was short-lived. She needed younger, more dedicated students willing to get into the outdoors and merge with nature. She was instinctively drawn to the composition and comfort of the forest, and much of her work reflects the solace she found in that environment.

Although she spent much of her time studying abroad, and teaching, she continued to be drawn to the Indigenous world. In 1907, she and her sister Alice took a cruise to Alaska stopping along the way at an American naval base. She stumbled upon an old village on the outskirts, of Tlingit origin, with totem carvings that adorned the pathways in their primal setting. Inspired, she tried to capture their authenticity with colour and intensity.

Renewal

Praised for her efforts by an American artist, she came to the realization she had a new focus. She resolved that she would “…picture totem poles in their own village settings and create as complete a collection of them as [she]could.”

(Growing Pains by Emily Carr.)

She found that her technique and mediums did not exemplify the subject. Dissatisfied, she needed something more, and set off to find a bigger, broader palette in the “new art” forms evolving in Paris.

In 1910, with her sister Alice as her interpreter, Emily again ventured into unknown territory seeking to develop her talent in a louder, Avant Garde fashion. She was prudish, and working with live nude models shocked her. She turned again to the landscapes. She varied watercolors with oils, and revelled in her artistic rejuvenation when two of her paintings were selected for a juried exhibition of New Art.

Returning to Canada, her audiences were not as indulging, failing to comprehend her nouveau approach. Impressionism was not widely understood, nor embraced, and Emily did not receive the gratification she had experienced abroad.

Drawn back to her commitment to complete the totem collection, she set out to explore coastal villages and record their history. It was the spirit she sought to capture – not just a reproduction on a page. She wanted to personify the emotions of the carving in such a way that it would be immortalized.

Relationships

In the summer of 1912, she would visit 15 villages, many abandoned, some of which acknowledged her presence with hostility. She would produce close to 200 works of art, mostly sketches and watercolors. Of these, many would be her final works, but some would be transformed into brilliant, evocative oil paintings, more closely embodying the vitality and essence of spirit she experienced. She was deeply moved by her travels and her observations. She feared for the demise of the artform and the culture, failing to comprehend the continuing evolution of its people.

Going this time by boat, instead of her trusty horse, she was accompanied only by her boat captain and her dog, Billy. On one occasion, she almost lost her beloved canine when a sudden storm erupted, and the boatman focused his efforts on their survival. Billy weathered the night in the sea on the boat, enjoying a joyous reunion the next morning.

Emily’s world may have been restricted in its human relationships however, it lacked nothing in terms of her animal companionship. Her family consisted of multiple dogs, a white rat, parrots, racoons, chipmunks, birds, and her devoted companion, Woo, a Javanese monkey.

Adopted by Emily in 1923, Woo was like the child she never had. Woo was separated from her own mother at a very young age and needed a maternal relationship. She often acted out if she didn’t feel she was getting enough attention. She would urinate in Emily’s shoes, or eat her paints, and became deathly ill on several occasions. Emily would dress her up in frilly girls clothing and take her in a baby carriage along the streets of Victoria, exciting the children, and inciting the disparagement of her local middle-class contemporaries.

Sadly, Emily suffered a heart attack and a stroke, and was unable to look after her friends. Woo was dispatched to the Stanley Park Zoo in Vancouver, where she would throw herself from side to side in her cage. She died a year later, confined, and devastated by the separation after almost 20 years together.

Rewards

Carr’s career was mediocre and her accomplishments lean, until a turning point in 1927 when she received an invitation to participate in an exhibition of Canadian West Coast Art – Native and Modern, which was being hosted in Ottawa. Amongst a group of peers which included First Nations artists, as well as members of the Group of Seven – Canada’s most notable artists of the time, Carr would feature the most significant number of pieces – 26 paintings, several pieces of pottery decorated with Indigenous-styled artwork, and four hooked rugs. She was 56-years-old.

This show, and her resulting association with the Group of Seven, in particular, Lawren Harris, would be the catalyst that inaugurated her place in Canadian history. She returned to her First Nations sketches from 1912. She had found the spiritual connection to her work, and for the next 15 years, would devote herself to the collection of totems and Indigenous representations for which she is acclaimed.

Redemption

On March 2, 1945, Emily Carr passed into her next life. Before she died, she spent the last few years of her life writing short stories and memoirs, Klee Wyck, The Book of Small, The House of All Sorts and Growing Pains – stories of her real-life experiences.

It has been “suggested” on occasion, that she plagiarized the traditional First Nations culture – a form of cultural appropriation, so to speak. But to most, including the First Nations people she lived and worked amongst, she afforded the highest of honours – the embodiment of passion and sincerity; portraying the power of a culture so strong and captivating, she sought to immortalize it in her work. There can be no higher honour.

In 2013 and again in 2021, Emily Carr paintings were auctioned for more than $3 Million dollars each. Her books are considered classics. She is recognized as “a central figure obviously in West Coast art and Canadian art, but she can also be thought of as central to early modern North American art and to 20th century women painters worldwide,” says Robert Heffel, Vice-President of Heffel Canadian Fine Art Auction House. She was, and remains, an artist on the edge.