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.

Indian Hut, Queen Charlotte Islands (c. 1930)
oil on canvas, 101.6 x 82.6 cm

In the period between 1928 and 1930, Carr drew on her many visits to remote native communities to produce dense, large-scale paintings of totem poles and sculptures. (The appropriateness of Carr’s use of native images has been the subject of academic and political debate.) “Indian Art broadened my seeing,” Carr wrote. “Loosened the formal tightness I had learned in England’s school. Its bigness and stark reality baffled my white man’s understanding.”