Middle school students at Vancouver Art Gallery

Art is our memory of love. The most an artist can do through their work is say, let me show what I have seen, what I have loved, and perhaps you will love it too.

— Annie Bevan

In the weeks before traveling to British Columbia to see two major exhibitions of paintings by Emily Carr—one of Canada’s most celebrated and fascinating artists—I read and researched everything I could about her.

Emily Carr Books

Born in 1874 in Victoria, British Columbia, she lived a complex life filled with tension between conventions of society and her own originality, between happiness and despair, within her personal relationships, and an often lonely struggle to overcome obstacles, both real and self-inflicted.

Biographer Paula Blanchard writes: “Fiercely independent and defiantly individualistic, Emily Carr was considered an eccentric by the society around her. Working largely in isolation, without the influence of strong women artists to look to, and years ahead of the art of her time and place, Carr demolished some traditionally cherished notions about women artists.” (And she did so, I might add, at great cost to her physical and emotional well-being.)

Emily Carr self-portrait

Carr was also a defiant Victorian, drawn to the deep forest and the open sky; an early recorder of Northwest Coast monumental art; a painter, writer, and humorist; a daughter, sister, friend; a student, teacher, mentor; a landlady, animal lover, and dog breeder. And, of personal interest to me as my next birthday approaches, a critically renowned painter whose talents would only fully emerge in her late 50s, a popular and award-winning writer first published at age 70.

In last week’s blog post I raised the question that I’d asked myself long before my husband and I entered the “Emily Carr: Into the Forest” exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery: “Will the artist’s great, swirling images of the mighty forests of the Pacific Northwest, which no one before or since has painted as she did, be all that I imagined them to be?”

Absolutely.

Eileen standing next to Tree Trunk, 1931, oil on canvas, at Vancouver Art Gallery

Seeing her forest paintings from the 1930s, both canvases and oil on paper works, three key early works completed during 1913–1918, and the remarkable, Grey, 1929-1930, quickly confirmed that the two-dimensional color plates of her work that I’d seen before only in books were inadequate representations of the vibrant colors, rich texture, bold brushstrokes, and spiritual aliveness I encountered in the originals displayed

 Unlike my husband Ralph—who’d had only a passing knowledge about Emily Carr before our trip—my study of Carr’s life informed my deep appreciation of the work I was seeing, the sometimes raw, sometimes tender, emotions and deep spirituality depicted within each frame: anger, fear, joy, awe, reverence, innocence.

A Rushing Undergrowth, Emily Carr, 1935

Ralph described his experience to me: “Standing in front of more than one original Emily Carr painting, I got a sensation that the trees and undergrowth in the painting were actually moving.  I don’t know how she achieved that effect, but it was palpable.”

Of this effect, so intense as to seem almost tangible, Emily Carr herself once said, “I figure a picture equals movement in space. Pictures have swerved too much toward design and decoration. The idea must run through the whole, the story that arrested you and urged that desire to express it, the story that God told you through that combination of growth … There is something bigger than fact: the underlying spirit …”

Or, as German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche observed, “An artist chooses his subjects: that is the way he praises.”

What I do know is, that after “going into the forest” of Emily Carr’s magnificent paintings, I would never see a tree, moss, or any aspect of the natural world in the same way, be it in the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden in Vancouver, in Beacon Hill Park in Victoria, or in my own backyard.

Beacon Hill Park, Victoria, with Ralph in front of tree

Sun Yat-Sen Garden three, Vancouver

My invitation to do so appeared on the front page of the New York Times Travel Section on October 2, 2017, with the headline: “Vancouver Island, Through an Artist’s Eyes.” Beneath an intriguing photo of a trail into a Pacific Coast rainforest, the feature’s first line revealed the artist’s identity. “Revered in British Columbia, little known in the U.S., the artist Emily Carr, born in Victoria in 1871, may be from another era, but amid environmental concerns, her works and images resonate.”

Zunoqua of the Cat Village, 1930

I’d been introduced to Emily’s Carr’s ground-breaking work in a Canadian Literature class taught by poet Deborah Keenan at Hamline University in 2004. Emily Carr: An Introduction of Her Life and Art by Anne Newlands was one of the assigned texts. The book was only 64 pages long, yet the color plates of this unconventional woman’s paintings spoke to me in a way no other visual artist’s work ever had.

I couldn’t articulate why. All I knew was that these images—created by an artist who nicknamed herself ‘Small’ as a child—brought to life a hidden part of me, raw and tender, foreign, yet totally familiar. Later, when I researched and read more about Carr’s life, she became a kind of imaginary friend, a kindred spirit much like I’ve always felt about the Anne of Green Gables author Lucy Maud Montgomery.

Emily Carr (Small, 1876)

The Times article highlighted two major exhibitions of Carr’s art: “Emily Carr: Into the Forest” (at the Vancouver Art Gallery, May 13 – December 3, 2017), and “Picturing the Giants: The Changing Landscapes of Emily Carr” at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria (June 10 – April 1, 2018). The window of time in which to see both exhibits in a single trip to British Columbia was running out.

My desire to see the originals was so strong that I decided I would travel there alone if I couldn’t find a travelling companion. To my surprise, my always-busy husband Ralph cleared his calendar for a week to accompany me.

Usually when we take a trip together, Ralph—a more experienced traveler than I—makes the arrangements. But this time, I quickly booked flights from Minneapolis, reserved two seats on the ferry between Vancouver and Victoria through BC Connector, pre-purchased tickets to the art exhibits, and took advantage of off-season hotel rates for accommodations at two grand, historic Canadian Pacific railway hotels.

The Fairmont Empress, Victoria, BC

Since the Emily Carr House in Victoria, her childhood home, was closed to the public for the season, a friend suggested that I request a private tour. Jan Ross, the curator of the provincial heritage site, graciously agreed to do so.

We departed Minnesota on November 8th with only three “must-do’s” planned in advance. We left the remainder of the sightseeing and dining adventures to chance, as our spirits and the unpredictable rainy-season weather dictated.

I have always loved being in Canada; once I arrive, I always feel like I have come back home.

The Homecoming, Nathan Scott, sculptor,Victoria, BC

Were Emily Carr’s richly drawn paintings of First Nations villages and totems, dark, haunting forests, wild beaches and vast skies all I imagined they would be?

In next week’s blog post, I’ll share my answer.

Eileen at Vancouver Art Gallery, November 9, 2017