Emily Carr is known throughout the world for her artwork but she was also an award winning writer.
In 1941 Emily Carr won the Governor General's Award for general literature for her first collection of stories, Klee Wyck however, she is better known throughout the world for her paintings of native carvings, wild storms and British Columbia's forests and coastlines.
Born in Victoria, British Columbia on December 13, 1871, Carr was the second youngest of nine children. She studied art at the California School of Design in San Francisco and then, because of a lack of money, she returned to Vancouver to teach children's art classes.
In 1899 Carr left British Columbia once again, this time she traveled to London, England to study at the Westminster School of Art. At this time she also studied sketching in Cornwall. In 1902 she became seriously ill and was forced to spend much of 1903 and 1904 in a sanatorium in Suffolk.
In 1910 Carr began studies at the Achademie Colarossi in Paris, France but once again she experienced several periods of illness. Carr suffered periods of poor health throughout much of her life. She had heart attacks in 1937 and 1939, a stroke in 1940, another heart attack in1942 and died of a fourth heart attack on March 2, 1945, while living at the St. Mary's Priory Sisters of the Love of Jesus guest house in Victoria.
By 1913 Carr had returned to Victoria. Her work during this period was not well received. British Columbians of this period were more appreciative of the traditional English landscape, a style that Carr had broken away from during her time in France.
Discouraged, and needing an income, Carr built the "House of All Sorts" in Victoria and spent the next twenty years as a landlady and dog breeder.
After receiving encouragement from the Group of Seven in the late 1920s and traveling to Ottawa for an exhibition in 1927, Carr was inspired to return to painting. Lacking the money to buy conventional materials she instead used ordinary white, house paint and Manila paper, which were inexpensive and could be bought in bulk.
During her life Carr's work went through several different periods as her style was affected by her life experiences. However, her most enduring and constant influences remained the same throughout: British Columbia's disappearing native population, which she first visited as a young woman in 1898, and the province's dramatic forests and coastlines.
Sources
BC Heritage Branch, Province of British Columbia, August 25, 1997, Biography of Emily Carr
Peterson, Michael, 2000, Emily Carr
