Emily Carr

Emily Carr – Life, Career, and Famous Quotes

Discover the life, art, writings, and enduring legacy of Emily Carr (1871–1945), the pioneering Canadian painter and author whose vision of British Columbia’s landscapes and Indigenous cultures reshaped Canadian art.

Introduction

Emily Carr (December 13, 1871 – March 2, 1945) was a Canadian artist and writer best known for her dramatic, expressive depictions of the forests, coastlines, and Indigenous totemic art of British Columbia. Over her lifetime, Carr evolved from a regional artist into a national icon—celebrated for blending modernist impulses with a deeply rooted sense of place. Her dual works of painting and prose combine an unflinching natural vision with poetic reflection, and her legacy continues to inspire artists, writers, and nature lovers alike.

Early Life and Family

Emily “Millie” Carr was born on December 13, 1871 in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada.

Emily’s childhood was steeped in Victorian sensibilities. The family practiced Presbyterian traditions; her father insisted on weekly recitations and religious observance.

Her mother died in 1886 and her father followed in 1888, leaving the young Emily and her siblings under the care of older sisters.

Youth and Education

After 1890, Carr embarked on formal art training. She went to San Francisco and studied at the California School of Design from 1890 to about 1893.

In London, Emily attended the Westminster School of Art and also studied with John William Whiteley in Bushey.

Later, around 1910 and onward, Carr studied in Paris. She enrolled at the Académie Colarossi and took private lessons under modernist influences (notably the painter Harry Phelan Gibb).

Career and Achievements

Emily Carr’s career unfolded in phases: exploration and documentation, evolution of style, struggle and obscurity, then late recognition in both art and writing.

West Coast Sketching & Documenting Indigenous Art

In her early maturity, Carr traveled repeatedly to First Nations villages on Vancouver Island, Haida Gwaii (Queen Charlotte Islands), Alert Bay, and along the Skeena River system.

These journeys left a deep imprint on her imagination. In her book Klee Wyck, she describes villages like Cumshewa as blending isolation, mist, and lonesomeness:

“The memory of Cumshewa is of a great lonesomeness smothered in a blur of rain.”

Her painting Big Raven emerges from these encounters with totemic imagery and forest spirit.

Style Development & Modernism

While her early work leaned toward representational landscape, Carr’s time in Europe encouraged bolder color and expressive form.

Her later style is often described as post-Impressionist, with linkages to abstraction, symbolism, and a mystical sense of nature.

In the late 1920s and 1930s, after she connected with members of the Group of Seven, in particular Lawren Harris, her work gained increased recognition and integration into Canada’s modernist movement.

Periods of Struggle & Artistic Dormancy

Despite her artistic ambition, Carr faced long stretches of obscurity and financial difficulty. From about 1913 to the late 1920s she painted relatively little, running a boarding house called the House of All Sorts in Victoria to support herself.

She also frequently confronted negative reception in local art circles, which were slow to accept her bold, modern style.

Literary Voice & Late Recognition

When her health limited her traveling ability, Carr turned more to writing. In 1941, her memoir Klee Wyck was published and won the Governor General’s Literary Award for non-fiction. Klee Wyck revealed her inner experience of nature and Indigenous communities, not just their visual forms.

In the early 1940s, she donated much of her artwork to the Vancouver Art Gallery via the Emily Carr Trust, helping establish institutional support for West Coast art.

Carr died in Victoria, British Columbia, on March 2, 1945, after suffering health crises.

Historical Milestones & Context

• West Coast & Indigenous Cultures: Carr operated in British Columbia, a region whose Indigenous art and forested landscapes were distinct within Canada. Her interest in recording totems and villages came amid concerns about the erasure of Indigenous heritage.

• Modernism in Canada: In the early 20th century, Canadian art was heavily rooted in landscape painting and realism. Carr’s experiments with color, form, and spiritual sensibility placed her on the frontier of Canadian modernism.

• Gender & Marginalization: As one of the few major female artists of her time in Canada, Carr faced gender bias in the art world. She once said,

  “The men resent a woman getting any honour in what they consider is essentially their field.”

• Cultural Appropriation & Critique: In recent decades, art historians have critically examined Carr’s representation of Indigenous culture, raising questions about appropriation, visual authority, and voice.

• Canadian National Identity: Carr’s work was formative in shaping a distinct West Coast voice within Canada’s broader national art narrative—connecting the forest, coast, and Indigenous heritage into a poetic whole.

Legacy and Influence

Emily Carr is now celebrated as a Canadian icon—a figure who helped give voice to the spiritual landscapes of British Columbia and brought them into modern consciousness.

• Cultural Institutions:

  • Emily Carr University of Art + Design in Vancouver is named in her honor.

  • The Emily Carr House in Victoria (her childhood home) is now a museum and National Historic Site.

  • Her donated works to the Vancouver Art Gallery via the Emily Carr Trust significantly enriched its West Coast art collection.

• Art Market & Recognition: Her paintings have fetched high auction prices, especially in recent decades.

• Inspirational Model: Carr has become a symbol of perseverance, artistic integrity, and connection to nature—especially for women artists, environmentalists, and Indigenous-art critics.

• Exhibitions & Scholarship: Her work continues to be exhibited internationally (e.g. “From the Forest to the Sea” in the UK).

Personality and Talents

Emily Carr blended sensitivity and grit. She was deeply spiritual about nature and yet pragmatic about financial survival.

• Deep empathy for nature: She felt herself part of her landscapes, not an external observer.

• Honest, unvarnished voice: As a writer, she echoed her painterly clarity.

• Resilience: Surviving poor reception, financial strain, ill health, and isolation, she persisted.

• Courage of aesthetic vision: She abandoned conservative styles in favor of expressive color and form.

• Curiosity & restlessness: Carr traveled widely, experimented with technique, and pushed boundaries.

• Inner conflict & self-doubt: She was acutely self-aware, often critical of her own work—even when others praised it. For example, when her painting The Indian Church was publicly admired, she felt embarrassed and could not look at it for long.

Her temperament combined poetic sensitivity with quiet tenacity: she painted not for fame but to respond to what she saw and felt.

Famous Quotes of Emily Carr

Here are some of her most evocative and revealing quotes (drawn from her journals, essays, and published works).

“The liveness in me just loves to feel the liveness in growing things, in grass and rain and leaves and flowers and sun and feathers and furs and earth and sand and moss.”

“Be careful that you do not write or paint anything that is not your own, that you don’t know in your own soul.”

“What do I want to express? … There is something additional, a breath that draws your breath into its breathing … a heartbeat that pounds on yours … a recognition of the oneness of all things.”

“Do not try to do extraordinary things but do ordinary things with intensity.”

“You always feel when you look it straight in the eye that you could have put more into it, could have let yourself go and dug harder.”

“I was not ready for abstraction. I clung to earth and her dear shapes, her density, her herbage, her juice. I wanted her volume, and I wanted to hear her throb.”

“It is wonderful to feel the grandness of Canada in the raw … some great rugged power that you are a part of.”

These lines reflect her blend of humility, intensity, natural spirituality, and artistic striving.

Lessons from Emily Carr

The life and work of Emily Carr offer many enduring lessons:

• Root creativity in place. Her deep connection to British Columbia’s landscapes gave her voice its power and authenticity.

• Persevere through obscurity. Recognition came late—but persistent work, even when unseen, matters.

• Balance documentation and interpretation. She moved from mere recording of totem poles to expressing the inner spirit of forests.

• Honor your own vision. She refused to compromise her sensibility to popular taste or trend.

• Recognize limits and shift focus. When her health or circumstances constrained painting, she turned to writing—and did so powerfully.

• Acknowledge complexity. Modern reflections on her work show the importance of critical awareness in representing cultures other than one’s own.

• Let art and life converse. In Carr’s case, her painting and prose illuminate each other, giving a fuller sense of her internal world and her external world.

Conclusion

Emily Carr’s life bridges the intimate and the epic: her meditative communion with forest and totem; her struggle in the margins; her revelation at last through brush and pen. She reshaped how Canadians—and the world—see the Pacific Northwest, threading together nature, culture, and the artist’s own spirit.

While her fame was modest in her lifetime, today Carr stands as both a beacon of Canadian art and a symbol of creative integrity. Her words and paintings continue to echo—inviting us to see more deeply, to listen more closely, and to remain honest to our own inner vision.

Explore Klee Wyck, her journals, and her paintings—let her voice draw you into the forests she loved.