C
CelticWarlord
Guest
Emily Carr (1871 – 1945) was a Canadian artist and writer who was inspired by the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast. One of the first painters in Canada to adopt a Modernist and Post-Impressionist painting style, Carr did not receive widespread recognition for her work until the subject matter of her painting shifted from Aboriginal themes to landscapes—forest scenes in particular. As a writer, Carr was one of the earliest chroniclers of life in British Columbia. The Canadian Encyclopedia describes her as a “Canadian icon”.
“I think that one’s art is a growth inside one. I do not think one can explain growth. It is silent and subtle. One does not keep digging up a plant to see how it grows.”
“If you’re going to lick the icing off somebody else’s cake you won’t be nourished and it won’t do you any good, or you might find the cake had caraway seeds and you hate them.”
“It is hard to remember just when you first became aware of being alive. It is like looking through rain onto a bald, new lawn; as you watch, the brown is all pricked with pale green. You did not see the points pierce, did not hear the stab - but there they are!”
“Why must people go on and on, copying, copying fragments of old relics from extinct churches, and old tombs as though those were the best that could ever be, and it would be a sacrilege to compete with them? Why didn’t they want to outdo the best, instead of copying, always copying what has already been done?”
“The forest was almost like a garden - no brambles, no thorns, nothing to stumble over, no rotten stumps, no fallen branches, all mellow to look at, melodious to hear, every kind of bird, all singing, no awed hush, no vast echoes, just beautiful, smiling woods, not solemn, solemn, solemn like our forests. This exquisite, enchanting gentleness was perfect for one day, but not for always - we were Canadians after all.”
“More than ever was I convinced that the old way of seeing was inadequate to express this big country of ours, her depth, her height, her unbounded wildness, silences too strong to be broken - nor could ten million cameras, through their mechanical boxes, ever show the real Canada. It has to be sensed, passed through; sensed and loved.”
“Who of us knows just why we do what we do, much less another’s whys, or what we’re after? Art is not like that; cut and dried and hit at like a bull’s eye and done for a reason and explained away by this or that motive. It’s climbing and striving for something always beyond.”
Code:
- - - - - - -“If you’re going to lick the icing off somebody else’s cake you won’t be nourished and it won’t do you any good, or you might find the cake had caraway seeds and you hate them.”
“It is hard to remember just when you first became aware of being alive. It is like looking through rain onto a bald, new lawn; as you watch, the brown is all pricked with pale green. You did not see the points pierce, did not hear the stab - but there they are!”
“Why must people go on and on, copying, copying fragments of old relics from extinct churches, and old tombs as though those were the best that could ever be, and it would be a sacrilege to compete with them? Why didn’t they want to outdo the best, instead of copying, always copying what has already been done?”
“The forest was almost like a garden - no brambles, no thorns, nothing to stumble over, no rotten stumps, no fallen branches, all mellow to look at, melodious to hear, every kind of bird, all singing, no awed hush, no vast echoes, just beautiful, smiling woods, not solemn, solemn, solemn like our forests. This exquisite, enchanting gentleness was perfect for one day, but not for always - we were Canadians after all.”
“More than ever was I convinced that the old way of seeing was inadequate to express this big country of ours, her depth, her height, her unbounded wildness, silences too strong to be broken - nor could ten million cameras, through their mechanical boxes, ever show the real Canada. It has to be sensed, passed through; sensed and loved.”
“Who of us knows just why we do what we do, much less another’s whys, or what we’re after? Art is not like that; cut and dried and hit at like a bull’s eye and done for a reason and explained away by this or that motive. It’s climbing and striving for something always beyond.”
