PHOTO ESSAY

Regarding Emily

Taking a fresh look at Emily Carr

By Rachel Giese
June 6, 2006

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Courtesy National Gallery of Canada.

Potlatch Figure (Mimquimlees) (1912)
oil on canvas, 46 x 60.3 cm.

In 1898, Carr made her first visit to Ucluelet, a native community on the west coast of Vancouver Island, the first of many trips that would shape her vision and style. Having committed herself to a creative life, Carr had studied at the San Francisco School of Art when she became deeply moved by the life and culture of the Northwest coast aboriginal communities. She was given the name Klee Wyck (Laughing One) by the people of Ucluelet, which she used as the title of her 1941 Governor General’s Award-winning book. This painting demonstrates both her interest in Native themes and, in its Gaugin-like colour and primitivist imagery, her European influences.