Emily Carr (15 page)
Authors: Lewis Desoto
At the end, Emily has become a wizard herself, and her magicâin the form of paintings and booksâspreads outward to touch lives everywhere. The apotheosis comes only after her death, when she is elevated into a kind a myth herself, and what was a solitary journey by one woman becomes a story for all.
Emily Carr's grave is under the trees in Victoria's Ross Bay cemetery, on a sloping piece of land overlooking the waters she travelled so often. Her body lies there under a plain headstone, a part of Canada.
She once wrote these words in her journal:
Dear Mother Earth! I think I have always specially belonged to you. I have loved from babyhood to roll upon you, to lie with my face pressed right down on to you in my sorrows. I love the look of
you and the smell of you and the feel of you. When I die I should like to be in you uncoffined, unshrouded, the petals of flowers against my flesh and you covering me up.
The marker on her grave gives no hint of the courage, the innovation, the talent, and the passion of an extraordinary person. It is a simple, small slab of stone. On it, her epitaph is engraved, modest, and to the point.
Emily Carr
Artist and Author
Lover of Nature
Somewhere, across the waters, in the deep green shadows of the forest, the totem poles and the giant trees still stand, and the spirit of a great artist still hovers around them.
CHRONOLOGY
1871 | Emily Carr is born December 13, in Victoria, British Columbia. |
1886 | Her mother, also called Emily, dies. |
1888 | Her father, Richard Carr, dies. |
1890â93 | She attends the California School of Design in San Francisco. |
1893â88 | She teaches art to children in Victoria. |
1899 | She visits Ucluelet for the first time and acquires the name Klee Wyck. |
1899 | She attends the Westminster School of Art in London, England. |
1900 | She rejects an offer of marriage from Mayo Paddon. |
1903 | She stays at East Anglia Sanatorium for eighteen months after a nervous breakdown. |
1904 | Back in Victoria, she contributes political sketches to |
1906 | She takes on students in her studio in Vancouver. She meets Sophie Frank. |
1907 | On a trip to Alaska she sees totem poles for the first time. |
1908 | She embarks on sketching trips in British Columbia. |
1910 | She studies in France. |
1912 | Her French paintings are exhibited in her studio. She goes on a six-week sketching trip in northern British Columbia. |
1913 | Her “Indian” paintings are exhibited in her studio. |
1913 | She builds a boarding house in Victoria. |
1914âEARLY 1920s | She manages the boarding house in Victoria. |
1924 | After a hiatus, she resumes painting, and exhibits her work in Seattle. She establishes a professional friendship with Mark Tobey. |
1927 | She exhibits in Ottawa and meets Lawren Harris and other members of the Group of Seven. |
1928 | She goes on a major sketching trip in British Columbia. |
1929 | She exhibits frequently and goes on a sketching trip on the west coast of Vancouver Island. |
1930 | She travels to Toronto, Ottawa, and New York, and makes her last trip to Native sites. |
1932 | She travels to Toronto and Chicago, and sketches in the British Columbia interior. |
1937 | She has her first heart attack, and starts writing seriously for the first time. |
1939 | She has a serious heart attack, and meets Ira Dilworth. |
1941 | Klee Wyck |
1942 | The Book of Small |
1944 | The House of All Sorts |
1945 | Emily dies in Victoria on March 2. |
All the statements attributed to Emily Carr are taken from her own writings.
Blanchard, Paula.
The Life of Emily Carr
. Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre, 1987. A richly detailed and extensive account of Carr's life.
Crean, Susan.
The Laughing One: A Journey to Emily Carr
. Toronto: HarperFlamingo, 2001. An imaginative and creative approach that combines fiction and history in its examination of many aspects of Emily Carr's life.
Moray, Gerta.
Unsettling Encounters: First Nations Imagery in the Art of Emily Carr
. Vancouver: UBC Press, 2006. The most thorough and extensive examination of Carr's encounters with Native peoples.
Shadbolt, Doris.
Emily Carr
. Vancouver: Douglas and McIntyre, 1990. The best analysis of Carr's paintings.
Tippett, Maria.
Emily Carr: A Biography
. Toronto: Penguin Books, 1985. A fine and sympathetic portrait of Emily Carr.